Other interesting lessons discovered: 1. You could run an >100' >100kbps rs232 link for over a year without issue. Proper wiring and rs232 length limitations be damned. 2. You could wire up an rs232 link (-12V and +12V) directly to a TTL input for over a year without issue.

People exceeding the defined limitations of things seemed to know better when it came to exceeding defined limitations.