First be aware of the voltage levels. Check out an RS232 driver data sheet and compare the electrical interface to your system requiremnts Then, search on UART Universal Asynchronous Reciever Transmitter. There are some code examples I found from google that get you half the way there. Looking for help from Altera I only find UART IP core references, such as users manuals. Putting one in a PLD, I assume you don't need all the fnctionality of a 16650. A 16650 is an old UART discrete part that is pretty much a standard now, and you can also search on that. There is also a Xilinx application note that promises a code exaple download: XAPP341. The two sentance summary is a minimalist asynchronous serial interface with an idle data line that you over sample to detect a transition that indicates a start of a word (start bit). You assume the bit period +-5%, clock in a byte, and wait the number of stop bit periods. There are optional buffers, controls, and handshaking. I see a couple complete descriptions on the web when I search on RS232 white paper .