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UART Device

Typical Serial and Parallel Ports of 20th Century
Typical Serial and Parallel Ports of 20th Century
Typical Configuration of a Serial Port with UART

The RS-232 serial port was widely used in the 20th century for character I/O devices (teletype, printer, dumb terminal).

A pair of simplex channels (output and input) make it full duplex.

Additional wires are sometimes used for hardware flow control, or a software Xon/Xoff protocol can be used.

Baud rate and number of bits per word must be pre-agreed.

Serial Port Connector (9 pin instead of original 25 pin).
Teletype/teleprinter: These devices were almost entirely mechanical with the electric circuit being little more than one switch activated by cams for transmit and one solenoid for receive.
Teletype/teleprinter: These devices were almost entirely mechanical with the electric circuit being little more than one switch activated by cams for transmit and one solenoid for receive.

22: (C) 2008-18, DJ Greaves, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory.