Introduction RS232 Communication

The Serial Port is harder to interface than the Parallel Port. In most cases, any device you connect to the serial port will need the serial transmission converted back to parallel so that it can be used. This can be done using a UART. On the software side of things, there are many more registers that you have to attend to than on a Standard Parallel Port.

So what are the advantages of using serial data transfer rather than parallel?

1. Serial Cables can be longer than Parallel cables. The serial port transmits a '1' as -3 to -25 volts and a '0' as +3 to +25 volts where as a parallel port transmits a '0' as 0v and a '1' as 5v. Therefore the serial port can have a maximum swing of 50V compared to the parallel port which has a maximum swing of 5 Volts. Therefore cable loss is not going to be as much of a problem for serial cables than they are for parallel.

2. You don't need as many wires than parallel transmission. If your device needs to be mounted a far distance away from the computer then 3 core cable (Null Modem Configuration) is going to be a lot cheaper that running 19 or 25 core cable. However you must take into account the cost of the interfacing at each end.

3. Infra Red devices have proven quite popular recently. You may of seen many electronic diaries and palmtop computers which have infra red capabilities build in. However could you imagine transmitting 8 bits of data at the one time across the room and being able to (from the devices point of view) decipher which bits are which? Therefore serial transmission is used where one bit is sent at a time. IrDA-1 (The first infra red specifications) was capable of 115.2k baud and was interfaced into a UART. The pulse length however was cut down to 3/16th of a RS232 bit length to conserve power considering these devices are mainly used on diaries, laptops and palmtops.

4. Microcontroller's have also proven to be quite popular recently. Many of these have in built SCI (Serial Communications Interfaces) which can be used to talk to the outside world. Serial Communication reduces the pin count of these MPU's. Only two pins are commonly used, Transmit Data (TXD) and Receive Data (RXD) compared with at least 8 pins if you use a 8 bit Parallel method (You may also require a Strobe).

Hardware Properties

            Devices which use serial cables for their communication are split into two categories. These are DCE (Data Communications Equipment) and DTE (Data Terminal Equipment.) Data Communications Equipment are devices such as your modem, TA adapter, plotter etc while Data Terminal Equipment is your Computer or Terminal. The electrical specifications of the serial port is contained in the EIA (Electronics Industry Association) RS232C standard. It states many parameters such as -

1. A "Space" (logic 0) will be between +3 and +25 Volts.

2. A "Mark" (Logic 1) will be between -3 and -25 Volts.

3. The region between +3 and -3 volts is undefined.

4. An open circuit voltage should never exceed 25 volts. (In Reference to GND)

5. A short circuit current should not exceed 500mA. The driver should be able to handle this without damage. (Take note of this one!)

            Above is no where near a complete list of the EIA standard. Line Capacitance, Maximum Baud Rates etc are also included. It is interesting to note however, that the RS232C standard specifies a maximum baud rate of 20,000 BPS!, which is rather slow by today's standards. Revised standards, EIA-232D & EIA-232E were released, in 1987 & 1991 respectively. Serial Ports come in two "sizes", There are the D-Type 25 pin connector and the D-Type 9 pin connector both of which 
are male on the back of the PC, thus you will require a female connector on your device. Below is a table of pin connections for the 9 pin and 25 pin D-Type connectors.

Serial Pinouts (D25 and D9 Connectors)

D-Type-25 PinNo.  D-Type-9 Pin No.                     Abbreviation Full Name

       Pin 2                     Pin 3                                        TxD Transmit Data

       Pin 3                     Pin 2                                        RxD Receive Data

       Pin 4                     Pin 7                                        RTS Request To Send

       Pin 5                     Pin 8                                        CTS Clear To Send

       Pin 6                     Pin 6                                        DSR Data Set Ready

       Pin 7                     Pin 5                                        SG Signal Ground

       Pin 8                     Pin 1                                        CD Carrier Detect

       Pin 20                   Pin 4                                        DTR Data Terminal Ready

       Pin 22                   Pin 9                                        RI Ring Indicator

Pin Functions

Abbreviation	Full Name	Function
TD	Transmit Data	Serial Data Output (TXD)
RD	Receive Data	Serial Data Input (RXD)
CTS	Clear to Send	This line indicates that the Modem is ready to exchange data.
DCD	Data Carrier Detect	When the modem detects a "Carrier" from the modem at the other end of the phone line, this Line becomes active.
DSR	Data Set Ready	This tells the UART that the modem is ready to establish a link.
DTR	Data Terminal Ready	This is the opposite to DSR. This tells the Modem that the UART is ready to link.
RTS	Request To Send	This line informs the Modem that the UART is ready to exchange data.
RI	Ring Indicator	Goes active when modem detects a ringing signal from the PSTN.

Null Modems

            A Null Modem is used to connect two DTE's together. This is commonly used as a cheap way to network games or to transfer files between computers using Zmodem Protocol, Xmodem Protocol etc. This can also be used with many Microprocessor Development Systems.

DB9                                            DB9

3    TxD -------------------->  RxD       2

2    RxD -------------------->  TxD       3

5    GND<------------------>  GND     5

Above is my preferred method of wiring a Null Modem. It only requires 3 wires (TD, RD & SG) to be wired straight through thus is more cost effective to use with long cable runs. The theory of operation is reasonably easy. The aim is to make to computer think it is talking to a modem rather than another computer. Any data transmitted from the first computer must be received by the second thus TD is connected to RD. The second computer must have the same set-up thus RD is connected to TD. Signal Ground (SG) must also be connected so both grounds are common to each computer.

            The Data Terminal Ready is looped back to Data Set Ready and Carrier Detect on both

computers. When the Data Terminal Ready is asserted active, then the Data Set Ready and Carrier

Detect immediately become active. At this point the computer thinks the Virtual Modem to which it is connected is ready and has detected the carrier of the other modem.

            All left to worry about now is the Request to Send and Clear To Send. As both computers

communicate together at the same speed, flow control is not needed thus these two lines are also linked together on each computer. When the computer wishes to send data, it asserts the Request to Send high and as it's hooked together with the Clear to Send, It immediately gets a reply that it is ok to send and does so.

            Notice that the ring indicator is not connected to anything of each end. This line is only used to tell the computer that there is a ringing signal on the phone line. As we don't have a modem connected to the phone line this is left disconnected.

Flow Control

            So if our DTE to DCE speed is several times faster than our DCE to DCE speed the PC can send data to your modem at 115,200 BPS. Sooner or later data is going to get lost as buffers overflow, thus flow control is used. Flow control has two basic varieties, Hardware or Software.

            Software flow control, sometimes expressed as Xon/Xoff uses two characters Xon and Xoff. Xon is normally indicated by the ASCII 17 character where as the ASCII 19 character is used for Xoff. The modem will only have a small buffer so when the computer fills it up the modem sends a Xoff character to tell the computer to stop sending data. Once the modem has room for more data it then sends a Xon character and the computer sends more data. This type of flow control has the advantage that it doesn't require any more wires as the characters are sent via the TD/RD lines. However on slow links each character requires 10 bits which can slow communications down.

            Hardware flow control is also known as RTS/CTS flow control. It uses two wires in your serial cable rather than extra characters transmitted in your data lines. Thus hardware flow control will not slow down transmission times like Xon-Xoff does. When the computer wishes to send data it takes active the Request to Send line. If the modem has room for this data, then the modem will reply by taking active the Clear to Send line and the computer starts sending data. If the modem does not have the room then it will not send a Clear to Send.

RS-232 Waveforms

            So far we have introduced RS-232 Communications in relation to the PC. RS-232 communication is asynchronous. That is a clock signal is not sent with the data. Each word is synchronized using it's start bit, and an internal clock on each side, keeps tabs on the timing.

The diagram above, shows the expected waveform from the UART when using the common 8N1 format. 8N1 signifies 8 Data bits, No Parity and 1 Stop Bit. The RS-232 line, when idle is in the Mark State (Logic 1). A transmission starts with a start bit which is (Logic 0). Then each bit is sent down the line, one at a time. The LSB (Least Significant Bit) is sent first. A Stop Bit (Logic 1) is then appended to the signal to make up the transmission.

            The diagram, shows the next bit after the Stop Bit to be Logic 0. This must mean another word is following, and this is it's Start Bit. If there is no more data coming then the receive line will stay in it's idle state(logic 1). We have encountered something called a "Break" Signal. This is when the data line is held in a Logic 0 state for a time long enough to send an entire word. Therefore if you don't put the line back into an idle state, then the receiving end will interpret this as a break signal.

            The data sent using this method, is said to be framed. That is the data is framed between a Start and Stop Bit. Should the Stop Bit be received as a Logic 0, then a framing error will occur. This is common, when both sides are communicating at different speeds.

            The above diagram is only relevant for the signal immediately at the UART. RS-232 logic levels uses +3 to +25 volts to signify a "Space" (Logic 0) and -3 to -25 volts for a "Mark" (logic 1). Any voltage in between these regions (ie between +3 and -3 Volts) is undefined. Therefore this signal is putthrough a "RS-232 Level Converter". This is the signal present on the RS-232 Port of your computer, shown below.

The above waveform applies to the Transmit and Receive lines on the RS-232 port. These lines carry serial data, hence the name Serial Port. There are other lines on the RS-232 port which, in essence are Parallel lines. These lines (RTS, CTS, DCD, DSR, DTR, RTS and RI) are also at RS-232 Logic Levels.

RS-232 Level Converters

            Almost all digital devices which we use require either TTL or CMOS logic levels. Therefore the first step to connecting a device to the RS-232 port is to transform the RS-232 levels back into 0 and 5 Volts. As we have already covered, this is done by RS-232 Level Converters.

            Two common RS-232 Level Converters are the 1488 RS-232 Driver and the 1489 RS-232 Receiver. Each package contains 4 inverters of the one type, either Drivers or Receivers. The driver requires two supply rails, +7.5 to +15v and -7.5 to -15v. As you could imagine this may posea problem in many instances where only a single supply of +5V is present. However the advantages of these I.C's are they are cheap.

Another device is the MAX-232. It includes a Charge Pump, which generates +10V and -10V

from a single 5v supply. This I.C. also includes two receivers and two transmitters in the same package.

            This is handy in many cases when you only want to use the Transmit and Receive data Lines. You don't need to use two chips, one for the receive line and one for the transmit. However all this convenience comes at a price, but compared with the price of designing a new power supply it is very cheap.

            There are also many variations of these devices. The large value of capacitors are not only bulky, but also expensive. Therefore other devices are available which use smaller capacitors and even some with inbuilt capacitors. (Note : Some MAX-232's can use 1 micro farad Capacitors). However the MAX-232 is the most common, and thus we will use this RS-232 Level Converter in our examples.