The UT82CRH51A is an enhanced version of the industry standard, Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (USART), designed to provide data communications between subsystem. The UT82CRH51A USART is built using UTMC's Commercial RadHardTM epitaxial CMOS technology and is ideal for space applications. In a communication environment an interface device converts parallel format system data into serial format for transmission, and converts incoming serial format data into parallel system data for reception. The UT82CRH51A is used as a peripheral device and is programmed by a host CPU to operate using virtually any serial data transmission technique. The USART accepts data characters from the CPU in a parallel format and then converts the data into a continuous serial data stream for transmission. Simultaneously, the UT82CRH51A receives serial data streams and converts the data into a parallel data character for the host CPU. The USART signals the CPU whenever it accepts a new character for transmission or whenever it has received a character for the CPU. The CPU reads the complete status of the USART at any time. These include data transmission errors and control signals such as SYNDET/BRKDET, TxEMPTY.