> > I believe UART preceeded processors. The first one I used was the
> > AY5-1013. Required +5 and -12V.
>
> Say ... isn't that the part the Radio Shack used to sell?  Seems like I used
> that same uart years ago, but not in the 70's.

There was also a Texas Instruments chip that was pin compatible to these. It had
a problem operating at high speed (as in 9600B was high speed) and would lock
up. The system we had these in was connected to a Burroughs machine which ran a
polled network, so in went a timer that reset the chip if there were no polls
received over a certain period.... Then we got some 6402 chips and the problem
was solved properly.

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.