Quote Originally Posted by mister_e View Post
Serial communication is a female thing, so bear in mind that preamble are needed and some of them may say the size don't make any difference
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Usually 3-5 $AA as preamble is enough. Machester encoding have it's own advantage if you send long data packet. A checksum is also handy.

I don't think the character pacing (pause x) is really needed if you're using a slow baudrate (2400 bauds or so)

a single SEROUT/DEBUG/SEROUT2/HSEROUT line is all you need in many case.

Always make sure your crystal are accurate.

BTW which PIC are you using?
I'm using PIC16F88. I have 4 $55 and am using Manchester Encoding.