Serial Communications through Digital I/O

[warped]

I am currently communicating with 2 devices in a setup using code I wrote in C#.  1 is a photoreceiver that I am using NI 6036E PCMCIA card to collect data from using NI-DAQ and the other is a device over a serial cable.

The device I am communicating with over the serial cable requires a 5 V TTL signal that is currently being converted on an electronics board (RS232 to TTL).  I would like to eliminate the need for serial cable and the electronics board and use Digital I/O channels on the 6036E card to send and receive signals.

Has this been done before, is there anything currently that allows for this or does anybody know how this could be accompished?

My thoughts on the matter:

I am assumming that I only need 2 digital channels, 1 for transmit and 1 for receive and then set up the software to send and parse the messages. 

For transmitting using 1 digital channel, since I can only send 1 or 0 (high or low) over the digital channel, to send a byte (8 bits) of data that would include a start bit and stop bit (10 bits total), I am assuming that I need to send this data in a loop using a DigitalSingleChannelWriter and streaming data to single line. Sounds simple right?  There is also a question of data rates. I am not sure if the device can handle the high data rate of the digital I/O because currently the serial communications are set to 115.2 kbaud.

Thanks for anybody's help or thoughts on this matter.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Just by looking at the specs of the board, the answer is no. You have static digital I/O. That means that it is strictly software timed. You'll never be able to maintain the correct timing even at lower baud rates. You could certainly provide a 5V signal to the device by patching your digital I/O into the serial cable though.