TTL Serial noise affecting entire board

dpmattox:
Please allow me to rephrase the question, is it safe to add a capacitor in parallel with RX and TX?

As a general rule adding capacitors to signal lines is a bad idea. Like the shift out tutorial in the learning section. It is often done by people who do not know what they are doing.

If a line is floating you might like to try adding a pull up resistor to the signal line.