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The serial port uses asynchronous communications. This means that there is no predefined interval between sending characters (for example, when characters are typed at an irregular rate on a keyboard). Therefore, the receiving device needs to be told when to expect data. This is achieved by framing the data bits with start and stop bits which indicate the beginning and end of the character. The actual data bits usually number 7 or 8 in total: for example, ASCII characters can be represented with 7 or 8 bits depending on the chosen code set. In addition, a parity bit is computed, and added immediately before the stop bit to provide a simple means of error detection. There are three types of parity setting that can be chosen: no parity, even parity (the total number of set data bits including parity is an even number) and odd parity (the total number of set data bits including parity is an odd number).
The following information can be configured for a serial port using the Serial Manager: