The
Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter
was one of the first really successful integrated circuits. In your
PC, the UART is the key component of the serial communications port. Data is
tranferred within the computer in units of 1 to 8 bytes, with a separate wire
for each bit within the byte. The UART receives a byte and converts it to a
sequence of voltage changes to represent the 0s and 1s on a single wire. The
modem takes the signal on this wire and converts it into sound. At the other
end, a modem converts the sound back to voltages, and another UART converts the
stream of 0s and 1s back into bytes of data.
The
Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter
was one of the first really successful integrated circuits. In your
PC, the UART is the key component of the serial communications port. Data is
tranferred within the computer in units of 1 to 8 bytes, with a separate wire
for each bit within the byte. The UART receives a byte and converts it to a
sequence of voltage changes to represent the 0s and 1s on a single wire. The
modem takes the signal on this wire and converts it into sound. At the other
end, a modem converts the sound back to voltages, and another UART converts the
stream of 0s and 1s back into bytes of data.