Lab 7: UART and serial ports

Generated folder: labs/uart/

Lab 7 introduces serial communication through a 16550-style UART. A UART turns bytes into a stream and receives a stream back into bytes. It fits in a lab but contains the reliability questions of larger communication systems.

Register idea	Role
line control	word length, stop bits, parity, divisor access
divisor latch	baud-rate divisor
FIFO control	receive/transmit buffering
line status	data-ready and transmitter-ready bits
interrupt enable	which events raise IRQs
loopback	transmit is routed back to receive

Read serial protocol thinking, complete the tasks, run the checks, and compare with modern serial links.

TIP

Loopback proves one endpoint before run-pair asks you to reason about two independent programs.