the routine 100 is then exited block 240 and reentered a short time later 18 2 times each second if at 200 the cts line is high the debounce counter will be reset to zero at 235 before exiting the routine at 240 it should be appreciated that the queuing method just described is related to queuing of key strokes on the keyboard 13 since the queuing of the start and abort key presses are performed by intelligent software as described above no additional hardware is required to be added to the engine analyzer 10 furthermore the interfacing of the remote control device 50 is non intrusive in that it does not affect the operational flow of the gas analyzer 20 with which it shares the serial port 30 because the interfacing of the remote control device 50 to the analyzer 10 is achieved using the unused lines of an otherwise dedicated port in combination with some intelligent software such as the initialization and interrupt handling routines described above the interfacing is easy economical and practical in the context of an emissions test the present invention allows a technician seated in the driver 39 s seat of a vehicle to remotely start a diagnostic test such as one requiring the gas analyzer 20 to be operably connected by depressing the start key 51 if the remote control device 50 has been properly initialized the.