Is the world ready for TTL RS-232 serial?

[hansknec]

I wouldn't like this solution, because if one device on the bus fails all others further down the line would be disconnected.

I agree.

Imagine you connect a standard driver (that drives the line to +/- 12V in idle state) to "your" kind of bus . . .

I Agree.
I thought it would be clearly apparent that the user could only connect my devices because the 9-pin serial gets converted to RJ-11 and would only be able to plug into my network. Each device on my network has two RJ-11 sockets that allows the units to be daisy chained on to the network (in parallel).

My existing devices are RS-485 now and they work, but I was just trying to come up with a simple to integrate RS-232 solution to save the end user some $$.
-John

[hansknec]

http://pdfserv.maxim-ic.com/en/an/AN723.pdf

A detailed tutorial about this very discussion. I wish I had googled "multidrop RS-232" before posing the question, but instead I had googled "multiple RS-232 devices on a single network", which got me nowhere.

So the end answer is that there are specific RS-232 Tranceivers designed just for the very purpose of developing a multi-drop RS-232 system (that remains within the EIA-232 standard)

The MAX3322E is one chip designed for this purpose. ($3 each)

Thanks for your input Bruce. I will now have to weigh all my options and perhaps order a dozen of these chips to build a prototype network.

-John