What I do have is an old Dontronics DT001(
www.dontronics.com) (bought quite a while back but got too busy to play with it), it's a programmer and testbed type unit based on
SimmSticks, I have a couple of sticks, one with led's and pushbuttons, one made for use with 16f84a (or similar) and a 40 pin stick.
I thought I would use this to get started and pickup something else (looking at Junebug and Inchworm). Since I had this I thought I would give it a go, but also thought it might be able to run via rs232 with a little mod. I'm still reading a bit about the old/new chips.
Tnx.