PaulS:
So, you are trying to write your own SoftwareSerial class?
Perhaps...What I am trying to do it write to a WS2801 LED strip via pin, not with SPI. And I want to keep my refresh rate as fast as I can so I don't lose the speed of the patterns that I have with the SPI. Considering a WS2801 can support up to 24Mhz, I am thinking I should be able to write to a full 5meter strip worth of data (480) bytes with a decent refresh rate. The ADAFRUIT library that does the bit writes is terribly inefficient and I figured if I am going to write an alternative myself, I am going to do it as fast as possible. There are some strict timing issues with starting the data but then after that I think I can just push the data as fast as possible. I guess I did not think about the SoftwareSerial class, perhaps it could work? Will have to look into that.