Talk:RS-485

Merge request

I'm requesting that this article have its history merged into EIA-485, where this article now is. (Someone else has improperly cut-and-pasted the article instead of moving it.) I made the request on the Helpdesk but got no response.   –radiojon 02:00, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Huh?

This seems like a nonsense sentence ... "between the ribbon cable?

This allows EIA-485 to implement linear topologies using only two lines and between the ribbon cable.

2-Wire and 4-Wire Implementations

Might be good to discuss the differences of a 2-wire (half-duplex) over a 4-wire (full-duplex) implementation. This seems to have become an increasingly popular marketing point with various vendors.

Confusing explanation of signals

In the Signals section, I find it very confusing and unhelpful to discuss signal states in terms of "marks" and "spaces" and "on" and "off". Is there some reason this can't be explained much more simply without involving these terms? IC datasheets typically refer to the signals simply as "inverted" and "non-inverted"; there is no mention of "marks", "spaces", "on" or "off". At the end of the day, the purpose of a paired driver/receiver is to reliably convey a generic single-ended signal. I've used them for many apps that have nothing to do with marks or spaces, including conveying V/F and incremental encoder signals, and interfacing instruments to a parallel data highway. As an aside, the discussions about A and B also seem overly complicated and, in some cases, possibly incorrect. Lambtron talk 20:41, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

AES3?

"RS-485 serves as a physical layer for the AES3 digital audio interconnect."

Source for this claim? This Wikipedia article (and various mirrors) seem to be practically the only pages on the web which refer to both RS-485 and AES3 together. Even the AES3 article here says: "The hardware interface is usually implemented using RS-422 line drivers and receivers", and makes no mention of RS-485.

The only other webpage I could find which mentions them together is a user manual for an audio processor which suggested that AES and 485 can be combined in a single cat-5e cable. Running in parallel to a signal is completely different from being the physical layer for it, though. ~2026-21647-06 (talk) 18:16, 8 April 2026 (UTC)