Question about PICBASIC Pro.

[mackrackit]

In a perfect world.

No need to go from TTL to RS232 to RS485. Just use MAX485 or similar(there's about a Gazillion of them), they convert directly from TTL to RS485.

But when it comes time to trouble shoot, and the PIC output is RS232, then hyper-terminal or a simple display could be used to check the data.

[Ingvar]

True, but for debugging it's cheaper(and simpler) to use a couple of resistors as suggested in the manual. If one just MUST use the hardwareuart for debugging it's still alot cheaper to hook up a max232(or similar) in parallell with the 485 driver.