CrossRoads: I'll try the 1.0 software and see what happens. I've seen other posts in the forum where the change to the hardwareserial.cpp fixed the issue at 300 for a few people but not sure why not in my case.
Osgeld: I agree with you with the fact that the need should not exist for 300 baud anymore. Unfortunately, I work for the US government and we still have some weather data recorders in our legacy systems that are 300 baud limited.
My actual usage in this case is nothing more than a serial programmer. I have about 5 minutes worth of serial entries I have to make in order to program one of these devices. I work at a repair facility so we do a number of them all the time. Trying to cut down on time and loss of my sanity by pushing a button and having the Arduino send the commands for me. I'm not aware of another serial program (HyperTerm, Pro-Comm, RealTerm, etc) where you can build a "script" of entries with delays inbetween for such action. If you know of one please advise and I'll give it a try and leave Arduino up to some tasks that might be a little more current.