Thanks for the feedback Robert. I have one that is for programming picaxe chips. It is com 3 and Microcode Studio sees that it's there, but when I try to run the IDC, it says that it's unable to connect to the PIC. The programming cable has input and output, but power is provided to the chip from a 5V supply connected to the programmer board. Not sure if that would cause a problem or not? I'm hoping this will work and I'm just doing something wrong, since I'm very ignorant about this stuff. Never done any of the serial stuff. I'm using the PIC16F648A.
The last page here shows the schematic for the cable:
http://www.picaxe.com/docs/axe027.pdf
Should that work?