Table of Contents
Upgrading To A 16550 UART
| Field | Computer-Hardware |
| Went Obsolete | ~2000 |
| Made Obsolete By | Serial ports disappearing, before that: UARTs? being integrated in chipsets |
| Knowledge Assumed | Pulling chips from a PCB, putting chips back in. |
| When useful | Repairing electronics. |
With the advent of fast (> 9600 bit per second) modems, old computers sometimes had troubles coping with the HIGH AMOUNT of data (at 19.2, 38.4 or even 57.6 kbit/second) arriving. To assist the CPU and lower the number of interrupts being serviced, one could typicalle pull out the older 8250 UART (universally asynchronous receiver/transmitter) from your serial-port interface card and replace it with a 16550 UART which had a 16byte fifo buffer. Therefore these chips often were not soldered directly on the card but rather put into a IC socket.
