Thanks, Bob. I'm a little closer to understanding. All of your reply was clear, until the final question about two serial links to the PC. Does C/MRI always and only use a serial link to the computer? Or, where else were you envisioning it? I didn't expect to duplicate C/MRI interface hardware, only mimic enough to use the same message structures.
It seems I should research C/MRI before asking anyone on this list to answer questions about connecting JMRI to it with my hardware.