You can probably do the power and com testing without the stim, but I am unsure how.
I use a USB to serial port adapter. I'm not sure which one, but it was about $20, so I'm sure as long as it's not like a $2 chinese special it ought to work fine.
I use windows. XP, Vista and now Windows 7 are the three operating systems I've used. I know zilch about Apple stuff, but starting with Vista Microsoft stopped supplying Terminal as a standard installed program, so the last two I've assembled I've had to search the internet for one and I think I used a trial version last time that expired after a month.
