UART

The Allwinner V3s provides 3x UARTs (Universal Asynchronous Receivers / Transmitters): UART0 with only RX and TX signals, and UART1 and UART2 with additional RTS and CTS hardware flow control signals.

Like most SoCs, the Allwinner V3s provides a serial console as a control terminal for debug and/or normal operation. By default, it is mapped to UART0, and it is used by the BROM (Boot Rom), the U-Boot bootloader and by the Linux kernel to output messages during the boot process, and later by the Linux kernel to log messages during normal operation. Depending on the configuration, it can be used too for loging into the system over an UART.

The Console schematic only requires a minimum of external components:

Besides the 3-pin 1.27 mm (0.05") pitch header J1 that will not be mounted on standard products, there is only a single series resistor R3.

What is the purpose of this resistor?

• As explained previously for the SD Card clock signal, this may be to prevent ringing. But given the relatively slow signal speed (115200 bps), it is not the case here

• If it were placed on the RX input signal, this could prevent frying the input pin if a large voltage (+5V, for example) is applied to it by dissipating the excessive voltage as heat in the resistor. It is not the case here, as the resistor is placed on the TX output signal, but we could have added one, if only we had some space left on the board... But as the V3s SoC can tolerate input voltages up to +3.6V on its pins, we should be safe!

• In fact, the resistor is on the output TX signal to prevent short-circuits if the serial cable is reversed and the 2 TX outputs are connected together, one driving the signal low, while the other is driving it high: again in this case, the voltage difference between the 2 outputs will be burned as heat in the resistor, saving the internal output buffers!