Aug 7, 2026, 3:08 PMHere's my favorite RS-232 story. Back in the early days of the ARPANET/Internet, at UCLA ARPANET site #1, the cubicle farm where staff and grad students had their "offices" was a considerable distance away in the same building from the ARPA machine room (later such rooms were called "computer rooms", today would be called "server rooms") with the two PDP-11/45s. I wanted to bump the serial speed to the terminals in there up to 19200, but couldn't on the existing cables. So I asked the physical plant guys to pull through better quality cables. The initial response I got back was a query as to why I could possibly need that, since practically nobody could read faster than 1200 anyway. I ultimately got my new cables.
