Joe Desbonnet demonstrates his use of a Bus Pirate as a serial-to-PC IO bridge with a PIC 16F327A. The PIC is simultaneously connected to a PICkit2 programmer, and this setup allowed him to communicate with the newly programmed PIC using serial commands in a prototyping environment. A good basic how-to post, including sample Bus Pirate commands, PIC Demo Program, and covering both Windows and Linux implementations.