Includes bibliographical references (pages 643-645), and indexes.

I. Basics ; ASCII -- Fundamentals of asynchronous technology -- Errors and error detection -- Information transfer -- Modems and modem control -- The UART : a conceptual model -- Real-world hardware : two UARTs -- The Hayes smartmodem -- II. Asynchronous programming in C ; Designing a basic serial I/O library -- Portability concerns -- Timing functions -- Functions for Baud rate and data format -- RS-232 control -- Miscellaneous UART functions -- Formatted output -- Formatted input -- Smartmodem programming -- XMODEM file transfers -- CRC calculations -- Interrupts -- III. Appendixes ; A. Console I/O -- Incidental functions -- The PC DOS assembly-language interface -- #include files -- Listing of IBMPC.C -- Listing of KAYPRO.C -- Listing of TERM6. Communications will play a central role in the computer applications of the next decade. The core of these applications is asynchronous serial communication. This book includes both theoretical and practical discussions of this topic, allowing programmers and technically advanced users to build their own C programming library of functions for serial communications.