>> As for speeds > 115.2k, do such animals exist in the RS-232 world?
>> I know there's RS-422 (twisted-pair) or whatever its called .. 
> 
> According to the spec it's not supposed to go faster than 9600 ( the spec
> was written in the 50s or 60s, when hardcopy terminals were the norm, and
> 300 baud modems hadn't been dreamed of yet (110 baud!).

And when people still understood analog electronics and transmission
lines (grumble grumble).  The RS-232 speed limitation comes from the
maximum slew rates (rate of change of voltage) and the minimum voltage
swings; the slew rate was limited to ensure that RS-232 cables could
reliably work over several hundred feet, where fast signal transitions
would get lost thanks to wire capacitance.  There used to be RS-232
driver chips with slew-rate limiting built right in.  Unfortunately,
they came out right about the time when people started to be more
concerned with getting 38400 out to terminals twenty feet away than
9600 out two thousand feet...