Background
I'm using an ATmega328P to send data to another device at a high baud rate (230400). The device I'm sending data to supports flow control and raises the RTS signal when it needs to hold the transmission. The problem is that the device is expecting me to stop the transmission immediately after RTS is asserted.
The ATmega328P has a transmission buffer (UDR) and a shift register from which data is sent to the TX line. Since the ATmega328P does not support flow control in hardware, I'm implementing it in software. Before sending (before writing to UDR) I'm checking RTS and waiting until it goes low, but apparently this is not enough because data in the transmit buffer and shift register is still being sent and a full byte could still be sent after RTS is asserted when the ATmega328P flushes its buffers.
Apparently, disabling the transmitter when RTS is asserted (setting the TXEN to zero) does not help since it will not become effective until ongoing and pending transmissions are completed, according to the documentation section 19.6.5.
A workaround could be to wait until Transmit Complete (TXC) before sending each byte, but this would impact the data rate since I'm not sending the byte stream back-to-back even when RTS is not asserted (I'm starting to send a new byte only after the previous one was completely sent).
My question is:
With the ATmega328P, is there a way to support RTS flow control in the transmitter while still enjoying the pipelining provided by the transmit buffer and shift register?