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There is no standard for this.

UARTs are called universal because they can be configured to work with "any" asynchronous serial protocol (within their bounds), which usually means

- 1 start bit

- 5-9 data bits

- even or odd parity

- 1-2 or sometimes 3 stop bits

per frame. Hardware UARTs also typically oversample 16x, which is why simple software UARTs are often somewhat glitchy.



The 5 bit data frame proved useful in the lab at uni where one of our tasks were to build a routable network over serial. :)

Split each byte in 4-bit nibbles and used the remaining data bit for not-quite-in-band-signalling.


See, you called it “asynchronous serial protocol” there. But one can certainly think of asynchronous serial protocols that are outside those bounds.

The Wikipedia article [0] calls this category “asynchronous start-stop signaling” but has no source.

I guess the best term is “UART protocol”, despite the limited size of the “universe”, since it’s really just a de facto convention established by decades of chips called “UARTs”.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_serial_communicat...




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