(Sometimes engineering feels like a course in advanced pessimism.)

It certainly can, but not in this case.

SBUF is actually comprised of two separate registers, one for Tx and one for Rx, that happen to live in the same location. Writing to SBUF will put the data into the Tx register, so there's not trashing of incoming data. Conversely, reading from SBUF will give you the content of the Rx register.

Now on to the really difficult stuff ;o)

G'nite,
Rob.