It should be perfectly possible. If you don't enable the USART, they
should be general IO pins. If memory serves me, the USART is DISABLED by
default, so as long as you don't touch the registers you should be fine.

-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Mitch Berkson
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 5:01 PM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [PIC]:Possible to use USART for RX and have TX as general
purpose I/O?


With a 16F877, I would like to use the USART to receive asynchronous
data but use the TX pin as a general purpose I/O.  After having tried
various permutations of TXEN, SPEN and tristating the TX pin or not, I
suspect that this is not possible.

Disabling the entire USART when I want to use the TX as an output is not
an option because receive data can arrive at any time.  A software USART
is also not an option.

Thanks for any help.

Mitch Berkson

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

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