Ok, so I have finally delved into building the V2.2 megasquirt that I have owned for the past 5 years or so. 
I know some other people (Duff) are going to be using it, and will probobly have some of the same questions, so I thought it might be handy to start a thread as a reference.  We had some good ones back at the old forums, but no more that I have found.

I seem to be getting held up on all of the simple stuff, so this is going very slowly.

My current problem is testing the serial link.

I have a DB9 port on my laptop, straight through cable, and hyperterminal all setup pretty.  The only problem, if I use COM1, it get a message telling me that it is being used by another telephony program or something.  If I switch to COM3, then no message, but still no letters on the screen.  So this leads me to the MS forums and the search function.  Found this:
http://www.megasquirt.info/connect.htm#ms1
But I'm unsure which of the dozens of programs I should start closing, hoping that I don't kill my computer.  I looked under the phone and modem options, and there are some weird microsoft telephony programs and whatnot, but I have no idea why they would be turned on.

So I followed someones advice and downloaded Megatune, so that I could use the mini-terminal.  I bring that up, and it echos the letters back no problem.  But wait, it does it on ANY COM, and whether the 2-3 pins are jumpered or not.  So I'm still not sure if this is what I want to see.

This has officially gotten to be far too long of a post, but that's what I'm dealing with.  Thanks for any input or help.

-Drew

that doesn't make sense that your computer says com1 is being used...i was under the impression the com1, com2, com3 were all the ports on the back of the computer...then leading me to believe that if nothing is plugged into it, it can't be in use.

i had problems with my cable at first, but it is a db9 to USB cable....i just had to figure out which com# was connected to my USB, but once i got that, all was gravy.

as for closing programs, i'm sure that there is a ton of stuff running that doesn't need to be. travis could help out with that one, for sure.

I started just closing programs and found one that was apparently using com1, so I was able to get that figured out.  Then I go to test the processor operation and now it wont connect.  Given everything that I have read, I'm under the impression that the crystal is broken, is digi-key the best place to buy one?
Thanks,
Drew

Digikey, Newark Electronics or similar. Might be able to find it local if you're lucky and actually own a yellow pages.