Serial Port: HW handshaking turned on only on sender side, transmission still works

Question

I am sending data over DB-9 serial port and I want to use HW CTS/RTS handshaking. The strange thing is that the sender still sends data even if I turn handshaking off on the receiver side. This doesn't make sense to me as the sender should wait for the CTS signal to come, which the receiver obviously shouldn't send as handshaking is turned off.

I already checked that I have got a full handshaking null-modem cable and not only a loop-backed one.

Is this the normal behavior or is there something wrong with my thinking? I already tried this in different programming languages.

Answer 1

This makes sense. When you disable handshaking, the state of the CTS pin will permanently tell the remote device that it's OK to transmit.