testing a serial COM port

hi i have a pc that runs win7 64 bit it came with no com ports so dad got me a dual pci serial port card for the pc. i have installed it and installed the drivers on the disk but i dont seem to be able to get a pic to send information to it so is there anyway i can test the COM ports on the pc? i have checked device manager and they show up there with no errors showing. is there anyway i can get characters to echo bach through a terminal program or somethiing???
thank you LG

Connect pins 2 and 3 together. Then in a terminal program you should see an echo of anything typed.

ok thank you i will try that