Electrically, IEEE 488 used a hardware interface that could be implemented with some discrete logic or with a microcontroller. The hardware interface enabled devices made by different manufacturers to communicate with a single host. Since each device generated the asynchronous handshaking signals required by the bus protocol, slow and fast devices could be mixed on one bus. The data transfer is relatively slow, so transmission line issues such as impedance matching and line termination are ignored. There was no requirement for galvanic isolation between the bus and devices, which created the possibility of ground loops causing extra noise and loss of data.