I thought rs485 only used a differential pair, no ground? I've only started playing around with it but I thought a common ground could actually be bad for it
Do you have to use coax? The twisted pair as said before is what is specified for usually, you can always adapt it at the end along with those terminating resistors
I doubt single-core coax will be suitable. The whole idea of differential pairs is that any noise affects both wires more-or-less the same. The coax would defeat that.
A Coaxial cable if used to carry control signals cannot co-exist with Video and it would resuire two Very special connectors on the equipment being connected... as Coax uses different connectors (Grounded). At low < 100Khz data rates and short (under 10 - 20 meters) the line impedance isn't really an issue... Just terminate them by the book. The real issue is that proper termination leaves them @ 1/2 Vcc and thus cannot exist with regular connectors, You Could use Twinax... but since you would have to "Pull" the cable through the harness any way it might just as well be shielded 2 way wire or 2 conductor shielded wire... Much Less expensive than Twinax although I seem to remember 150 - 300 ohm Twinax... Mightily expensive though.
I think I left those off for a reason. In this particular case the bus is terminated at each end by the transceiver itself. If you have a long cable run, and the devices are connected somewhere in the middle, then yes, I believe the termination resistors are required.
Example documentation:
I quote:
One Transmitter, One Receiver
The simplest network is one transmitter and one receiver (Figure 6). In this example, a termination resistor is shown at the transmitter end of the cable. Although unnecessary here, it is probably a good habit to design-in both termination resistors. This allows the transmitter to be moved to locations other than the far end, and permits additional transmitters to be added to the network if that becomes necessary.
Shouldn't there be ~120 Ohm terminating resistors at either end of the bus?
Normally that's the case but for short runs and low speeds I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The termination Nick has is called "fail safe termination", it's designed to force the line to a known state if neither transmitter is active.