Serial repeater

[hippohenk]

I want to build a 'serial repeater' based on a PIC with a few max232-type serial connections. The goal is to have a 'spider in a web' serial setup that will allow many 2 many serial communication between a few computers (servers that have bios/boot/linux console over rs232). In it's initial state the PIC should listen on all ports for an escape sequence that tells it to accept that port as a 'master' followed by the portnumber of the 'slave' the PIC should than set up two-way serial communication between those two ports until the 'master' end this with an escape sequence or after a few minutes of silence, and than go back to listening mode.

The problem I'm not sure how to solve is the 'serial pass through' mode. I'm using proton picbasic and I can use 'serin' and 'serout' to communicate on one port, but while that is running on port I, port II may be trying to send data to it. I need to somehow switch fast between the two or something like that.

Do you guys know if/how I can get proton picbasic to 'bind' two software serial ports together?

[cocoengin]

As i was on my way to request any help from anybody on that forum about serial port communication, i saw your e-mail. Also i must do an application that is described as below:
i have 10 modules that sends serial data when i send a challange from my PIC. and i must check these responses one by one and i will compare with a data that is fixed in my PIC register. If i can not get expected data from all these 10 modules i will check again 1 minute later to all these 10 modules. When i get expected one i will save it to my register and wait till 11st (server) module ask me if i have the expected one or not. And if i have that data i will send it to server. For that project i am going to use PicBasic Pro language.  First between these 10 modules and my PIC i will use 5 Max232 and 1 74138(3 to 8 decode) decoder, but between my PIC and server i must use another UART, since i have only 1 UART module on my PIC(16f877). So What should i do? Is it possible to use a virtual UART? I dont know how to use that function with Pic basic Pro. Any Help? Thanks for all