Yes, but I don't want to start a "war"...

Erik, what we discuss is discussed between engineers for decades, right? There are two main groups, one sitting in the USA demanding the use of unshielded cables, protecting the signals by filters etc. and the other group is sitting in the EU demanding the use of shielded cables, with shields connected to chassis ground at both ends, in the last consequence.

PROFIBUS applications, which carry RS485 signals have specifications which demand to use shielded cables with both ends connected to chassis ground, which is finally connected to protective earth everywhere. The RS485 signal lines is galvanically isolated from the cable shield. There's only a 10nF cap bewteen both, to shunt high frequency noise to protective earth.

It's not so much, that the one scheme is better than the other (ok, I'm convinced that the shielded cables with chassis connections at both ends is better...). Problematic is more, that both schemes cannot be mixed! You either omit ground loops totally or you have an infinite number of them to make the introduced ground loop potentials to cancel each other.

Kai