Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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     In most MS-DOS systems, the serial device is unbuffered and is not
     interrupt driven. If the auxiliary device sends data faster than
     your program can process it, characters may be lost.
 
     At startup on the IBM PC, PC-DOS initializes the first serial port
     to 2400 baud, no parity, 1 stop bit, and 8 data bits. Other
     implementations of MS-DOS may initialize the serial device
     differently.
 
     There is no way for a user program to read the status of the
     auxiliary device or to detect I/O errors (such as lost characters)
     through this function call. On the IBM PC, more precise control
     can be obtained by calling ROM BIOS Int 14h or by driving the
     communications controller directly.
 
     If CTRL+C is detected at the keyboard, an Int 23h is executed.
 
     You can also input from the auxiliary device by requesting a read
     (Int 21h Function 3Fh) using the predefined handle for the
     standard auxiliary device (0003h) or using a handle obtained by
     opening the logical device AUX.
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