In general, a receiver won't care if the
transmitter generates too many
start bits, but may well object to too few.
^^^^^^^
Ouch!!! As Dwight pointed out to me in private e-mail, I did of course
mean STOP bits there.
That's what comes of posting when you've spent the entire day trying to
untangle the circuitry on the HP98780A deflection PCB...
-tony