COM (hardware interface)

[4] After the RS-232 COM port was removed from most consumer-grade computers, an external USB-to-UART serial adapter cable was used to compensate for the loss.

[citation needed] The COM ports are interfaced by an integrated circuit such as 16550 UART.

This IC has seven internal 8-bit registers which hold information and configuration data about which data is to be sent or was received, the baud rate, interrupt configuration and more.

In the case of COM1, these registers can be accessed by writing to or reading from the I/O addresses 0x3F8 to 0x3FF.

If the CPU, for example, wants to send information out on COM1, it writes to I/O port 0x3F8, as this I/O port is "connected" to the UART IC register which holds the information that is to be sent out.