05-22-2013, 12:41 AM
Serial is very simple. When you deal with lines of redstone that run next to one another, that is called parallel. When your bits are separated by time rather than space, it is serial. Serial is commonly used for data transfer, and not much else. It is useful because it allows the use of a single line rather than very large multi-line cables. The key components of using serial are the serial encoder and the serial decoder. A serial encoder takes bits in parallel and converts them to on and off pulses on a single line at a regular interval. A serial decoder takes these pulses and converts them to parallel. This can be done in a number of different ways, but hopefully this is enough to get you started.