>With the recent discussions concerning UARTS it seems as though it
>might be useful in some designs to have a UART that's serially
>interfaced somewhat like an EEPROM. If it had TX and RX buffers of
>a few bytes built in it would be all the nicer. Does such an animal
>exist to anyone's knowledge?

You might want to look at the Harris CSD68HC68S1  It is not a direct
solution, but it can be made to work. It is a single byte device.