You don't have to understand the basics to use the serial port But understanding it may help to determine what is wrong if you run into problems. This section not only presents new topics but also repeats much of what was said in the previous section How It Works --Overview but in greater detail.
The serial port is an I/O (Input/Output) device. An I/O device is a way to get data into and out of a computer. There are many types of I/O devices such as serial ports, parallel ports, disk drive controllers, ethernet boards, universal serial buses, etc. Most PC's have one or two serial ports. Each has a 9-pin connector (sometimes 25-pin) on the back of the computer. Computer programs can send data (bytes) to the transmit pin and receive bytes from the receive pin. The other pins are for control purposes and ground.
The serial port is much more than just a connector. It converts the data from the parallel to serial and changes the electrical representation of the data. Inside the computer, data bits flow in parallel (using many wires at the same time). Serial flow is a stream of bits over a single wire (such as on the transmit or receive pin of the serial connector). For the serial port to create such a flow, it must convert data from parallel (inside the computer) to serial (and conversely).
Most of the electronics of the serial port is found in a computer chip (or a section of a chip) known as a UART. For more details on UARTs see the section What Are UARTs? How Do They Affect Performance?. But you may want to finish this section first so that you will hopefully understand how the UART fits into the overall scheme of things.
Old PC's used 25 pin connectors but only about 9 pins were actually used so today most connectors are only 9-pin. Each of the 9 pins connects to a wire. Besides the single wires used for transmitting and receiving data, another pin (wire) is signal ground. The voltage on any wire is measured with respect to this ground. There are still more wires which are for control purposes (signalling) only and not for sending bytes. All of these signals could have been sent on a single wire, but instead, there is a separate dedicated wire for every type of signal. Some (or all) these control wires are called "modem control lines". Modem control wires are either in the asserted state (on) of +12 volts or in the negated state (off) of -12 volts. One of these wires are is a wire to signal the computer to stop sending bytes out the serial port cable. Conversely, another wire signals the device attached to the serial port to stop sending bytes to the computer. If the attached device is a modem, other wires may tell the modem to hang up the telephone line or tell the computer that a connection has been made or that the telephone line is ringing (someone is attempting to call in). See section Pinout and Signals for more details.
The serial port (not the USB) is usually a RS-232-C, EIA-232-D, or EIA-232-E. These three are almost the same thing. The original RS (Recommended Standard) prefix became EIA (Electronics Industries Association) and later EIA/TIA after EIA merged with TIA (Telecommunications Industries Association). The EIA-232 spec provides also for synchronous (sync) communication but the hardware to support sync is almost always missing on PC's. The RS designation is obsolete but is still widely used. EIA will be used in this howto. Some documents use the full EIA/TIA designation. For info on other (non-EIA-232) serial ports see the section Other Serial Devices (not async EIA-232)
Since the computer needs to communicate with each serial port, the operating system must know that each serial port exists and where it is (its I/O address). It also needs to know what wire (IRQ number) the serial port is to use to request service from the computer's CPU. It requests service by sending an interrupt on this wire. Thus every serial port device must store in its non-volatile memory both its I/O address and its Interrupt ReQuest number: IRQ. See Interrupts. For the PCI bus it doesn't work exactly this way since the PCI bus has its own system of interrupts. But since the PCI-aware BIOS sets up chips to map these PCI interrupts to IRQs, it seemingly behaves just as described above.
The serial ports are labeled ttyS0, ttyS1, etc. (corresponding to
COM1, COM2, etc. in DOS/Windows). Which one of these names refers to
certain physical serial port is determined by the I/O address stored
inside the hardware chip of the physical port. This mapping of names
(such as ttyS1) to I/O addresses and IRQ's may be set by the
"setserial" command.
What is Setserial.
This does not set the I/O address and IRQ on the hardware itself
(which is set by jumpers or by plug-and-play software).
I/O addresses are not the same as memory addresses. When an I/O addresses is put onto the computer's address bus, another wire is energized. This both tells main memory to ignore the address and tells all devices which have I/O addresses (such as the serial port) to listen to the address to see if it matches. If the address matches, then the I/O device reads the data on the data bus.
When the serial port gets a byte (or sometimes after it gets say 8 or 14 bytes) it signals the CPU to fetch it (them) by sending an electrical signal known as an interrupt on a dedicated conductor. It will also send this interrupt if there is an unexpected delay while waiting for the next byte to arrive (known as a timeout).
Each interrupt conductor (inside the computer) has a number (IRQ) and the serial port must know which conductor to use to signal on. For example, ttyS0 normally uses IRQ number 4 known as IRQ4 (or IRQ 4). A list of them and more will be found in "man setserial" (search for "Configuring Serial Ports"). Interrupts are issued whenever the serial port needs to get the CPU's attention. It's important to do this in a timely manner since the buffer inside the serial port can hold only 16 (1 in old modems) incoming bytes. If the CPU fails to remove such received bytes promptly, then there will not be any space left for any more incoming bytes and overflow (overrunning) may occur (bytes will be lost). There is no Flow Control to prevent this.
Interrupts are also issued when the serial port has just sent out all 16 of its bytes from its small transmit buffer out the external cable. It then has space for 16 more outgoing bytes. The interrupt is to notify the CPU of that fact so that it may put more bytes in the small transmit buffer to be transmitted. Also, when a modem control line changes state an interrupt is issued.
Interrupts convey a lot of information but only indirectly. The interrupt itself just tells a chip called the interrupt controller that a certain serial port needs attention. The interrupt controller then signals the CPU. The CPU runs a special program (part of the serial driver software) to service the serial port called an interrupt service routine (or interrupt handler). It tries to find out what has happened at the serial port and then deals with the problem such a transferring bytes from (or to) the serial port's hardware buffer. This program can easily find out what has happened since the serial port has registers at I/O addresses known to the the serial driver software. These registers contain status information about the serial port. The software reads these registers and by inspecting the contents, finds out what has happened and takes appropriate action.
Data (bytes representing letters, pictures, etc.) flows into and out of your serial port. Flow rates (such as 56k (56000) bits/sec) are (incorrectly) called "speed". But almost everyone says "speed" instead of "flow rate".
It's important to understand that the average speed is often less than the specified speed. Waits (or idle time) result in a lower average speed. These waits may include long waits of perhaps a second due to Flow Control. At the other extreme there may be very short waits (idle time) of several micro-seconds between bytes. If the device on the serial port (such as a modem) can't accept the full serial port speed, then the average speed must be reduced.
Flow control means the ability to stop the flow of bytes in a wire. It also includes provisions to restart the flow without any loss of bytes. Flow control is needed for modems to allow a jump in flow rates.
For example, consider the case where you connect a 36.6k modem to your serial port that simply sends and receives bytes over the phone line at exactly 36.6k bits per second (bps). It's not doing any data compression or error correction. You have set the serial port speed to 115,200 bits/sec (bps), and you are sending data from your computer to the phone line. Then the flow from the your computer to your modem is at 115.2k bps. However the flow from your modem out the phone line is at best only 33.6k bps. Since a faster flow (115.2k) is going into your modem than is coming out of it, the modem is storing the excess flow (115.2k -33.6k = 81.6k bps) in one of its buffers. This buffer would eventually overrun (run out of storage space) unless the 115.2k flow is stopped.
But now flow control comes to the rescue. When the modem's buffer is almost full, the modem sends a stop signal to the serial port. The serial port passes on the stop signal on to the device driver and the 115.2k bps flow is halted. Then the modem continues to send out data at 33.6k bps drawing on the data it previous accumulated in its (the modem's) buffer. Since nothing is coming into the buffer, the level of bytes in it starts to drop. When almost no bytes are left in the buffer, the modem sends a start signal to the serial port and the 115.2k flow from the computer to the modem resumes. In effect, flow control creates an average flow rate (in this case 33.6k) which is significantly less than the "on" flow rate of 115.2k bps. This is "start-stop" flow control.
The above is a simple example of flow control for flow from the computer to a modem , but there is also flow control which is used for the opposite direction of flow: from a modem to a computer. This is the essence of flow control but there are many more details to explain.
Note that the transmit buffer in the modem as mentioned above is in addition to the two transmit buffers of the serial port: the small hardware buffer and the large one in main memory. Flow control protects certain buffers from overflowing. The small hardware buffers are not protected in this way but rely instead on a fast response to the interrupts they issue.
Understanding flow-control theory can be of practical use. The symptom of no flow control is chunks of data missing from files sent without the benefit of flow control. This is because when overflow happens, it's usually more than just a few bytes that overflow and are lost. Often hundreds or even thousands of bytes get lost, and all in contiguous chunks.
For modems, it's best to use "hardware" flow control that uses two dedicated "modem control" wires to send the "stop" and "start" voltage signals. See RTS/CTS, DTR and DTR/DSR Hardware Flow Control. Software flow control uses the main receive and transmit wires to send the start and stop signals. It uses the ASCII control characters DC1 (start) and DC3 (stop) for this purpose. They are just inserted into the regular stream of data. Software flow control is not only slower in reacting but also does not allow the sending of binary data thru the modem since binary data will likely contain the control characters DC1 and DC3 used for flow control.
In addition to the pair of 16-byte serial port buffers (in the hardware) there is still another pair of buffers. These are large buffers (perhaps 8k) in main memory also known as serial port buffers. When an application program sends bytes to the serial port they first get stashed in the the transmit serial port buffer in main memory. The pair consists of both this transmit buffer and a receive buffer for the opposite direction of byte-flow.
The serial device driver takes out say 16 bytes from this transmit buffer, one byte at a time and puts them into the 16-byte transmit buffer in the serial hardware for transmission. Once in that transmit buffer, there is no way to stop them from being transmitted. They are then transmitted out of the serial port. When the device driver (on orders from flow control) stops the flow of outgoing bytes from the computer, what it actually stops is the flow of outgoing bytes from the large transmit buffer in main memory. Even after this has happened and the outgoing serial flow has stopped, an application program may keep sending bytes to the 8k transmit buffer until it becomes fill. When it gets fill, the application program can't send any more bytes to it (a "write" statement in a C_program blocks) and the application program temporarily stops running and waits until some buffer space becomes available. Thus a flow control "stop" is ultimately able to stop the program that is sending the bytes. Even though this program stops, the computer does not necessarily stop computing. It may switch to running other processes while it's waiting at a flow control stop. The above was a little oversimplified since there is another alternative of having the application program itself do something else while it is waiting to "write".
For many situations, there is a transmit path involving several links, each with its own flow control. For example, I type at a text-terminal connected to a PC with a modem to access a BBS. For this I use the application program "minicom" which deals with 2 serial ports: one connected to a modem and another connected to the text-terminal. What I type at the text terminal goes into the first serial port to minicom, then from minicom out the second serial port to the modem, and then onto the telephone line to the BBS. The text-terminal has a limit to the speed at which bytes can be displayed on its screen and issues a flow control "stop" from time to time to slow down the flow. What happens when such a "stop" is issued? Let's consider a case where the "stop" is long enough to get thru to the BBS and stop the program at the BBS which is sending out the bytes.
Let's trace out the flow of this "stop" (which may be "hardware" on some links and "software" on others). First, suppose I'm "capturing" a long file from the BBS which is being sent simultaneously to both my text-terminal and a to file on my hard-disk. The bytes are coming in faster than the terminal can handle them so it sends a "stop" out its serial port to the first serial port on my PC. The device driver detects it and stops sending bytes from the 8k serial buffer (in main memory) to the terminal. Now minicom still keeps sending out bytes for the terminal into this 8k buffer.
When this 8k transmit buffer (on the first serial port) is full, minicom must stop writing to it. Minicom stops and waits. But this also causes minicom to stop reading from the 8k receive buffer on the 2nd serial port connected to the modem. Flow from the modem continues until this 8k buffer too fills up and sends a different "stop" to the modem. Now the modem's buffer ceases to send to the serial port and also fills up. The modem (assuming error correction is enabled) sends a "stop signal" to the other modem at the BBS. This modem stops sending bytes out of its buffer and when its buffer gets fill, another stop signal is sent to the serial port of the BBS. At the BBS, the 8-k (or whatever) buffer fills up and the program at the BBS can't write to it anymore and thus temporarily halts.
Thus a stop signal from a text terminal has halted a programs on a BBS computer. What a Rube Goldberg (complex) sequence of events! Note that the stop signal passed thru 4 serial ports, 2 modems, and one application program (minicom). Each serial port has 2 buffers (in one direction of flow): the 8k one and the hardware 16-byte one. The application program may have a buffer in its C_code. This adds up to 11 different buffers the data is passing thru. Note that the small serial hardware buffers do not participate directly in flow control.
If the terminal speed limitation is the bottleneck in the flow from the BBS to the terminal, then its flow control "stop" is actually stopping the program that is sending from the BBS as explained above. But you may ask: How can a "stop" last so long that 11 buffers (some of them large) all get filled up? It can actually happen this way if all the buffers were near their upper limits when the terminal sent out the "stop".
But if you were to run a simulation on it you would discover that it's usually more complicated than this. At an instant of time some links are flowing and others are stopped (due to flow control). A "stop" from the terminal seldom propagates back to the BBS neatly as described above. It may take a few "stops" from the terminal to result in one "stop" at the BBS. To understand what is going on you really need to observe a simulation which can be done for a simple case with coins on a table. Use only a few buffers and set the upper level for each buffer at only a few coins.
Does one really need to understand all this? Well, understanding this explained to me why capturing text from a BBS was loosing text. The situation was exactly the above example but modem-to-modem flow control was disabled. Chunks of captured text that were supposed to also get to my hard-disk never got there because of an overflow at my modem buffer due to flow control "stops" from the terminal. Even though the BBS had a flow path to the hard-disk without bottlenecks, the overflow due to the terminal happened on this path and chunks of text were lost and never even made it to the hard-disk. Note that the flow to the hard-disk passed thru my modem and since the overflow happened there, bytes intended for the hard-disk were lost.