I got a requirement to communicate one master device and eight slave devices. I intended to use RS485 half-duplex communication for this system but all devices happened to have only RS232 interfaces.
RS232 communication is a sort of communication that is to be used for one-to-one system. There is no problem if only the master device transmits and all slaves are receiving. The problem is that transmit lines of the slaves cannot be disabled and so that they cannot connect to the same line.
After analyzing the voltage signals, I have got an alternative solution to this problem. By adding a diode to the transmit line of each slave, I can use the system just like RS485 half-duplex communication. See the following figure for the hardware connection.
Updated: 2017 Sep 02
Thanks for all your comments. I have added more configurations according to your comments.
RS232 network with multiple masters and multiple slaves
UART/TTL-Serial network with single master and multiple slaves
If you are not using RS232 transceivers to change the physical signal voltages, the outputs of UARTs are still TTL level signals. In this case, you can connect multiple UARTs to a single master as follow.
UART/TTL-Serial network with multiple masters and multiple slaves
