Quote Originally Posted by HenrikOlsson View Post
OK, but the bootloader does not hold up the UART once the main program starts to execute, you're free to use it as you wish then. But I guess you have your reasons, I just had to ask.
Well, I had never heard of Amicus18 nor any of the other Arduino clones before a few days ago so it may be partly due to ignorance. And wanting to make my designs as universal (and low cost) as possible, I thought the safest route was to use the software UARTs for access to these ethernet<->serial adapters. I usually use DEBUG/DEBUG_IN myself so it was somewhat out of habit that I chose this route. In most cases, the software UARTs should be fast enough for the types of things we might want to do via these adapters. There's also the possibility that another shield in the stack might need the USART. But feel free to cut the traces* and reroute as you wish.

*jump the traces seems somehow appropriate here - but you probably need to be my age and remember teams of horses pulling things (beyond Budweiser wagons) to understand why.