"...Parviz was looking for ISP." Thanks Dennis.

Good, I'm still on track then. I had gone to earlier posts and searched back to see what Mahmood's configuration was, which appeared to be an ISP solution, but then began thinking I had misunderstood upon seeing the standalone programmer IJAZ linked to.

So just to be clear, the software I have implements an ISP means similar to Mahmood's configuration, but instead of using the PC's parallel port and a 74HC244 driver to bit-bang SPI, it uses the PC's serial port and R2-232 driver/receiver to bit-bang SPI (i.e., CLK on TxD, MOSI on DTR, MISO on CTS, etc). This was so the target system could use the same cable for normal application-specific PC/target UART comms and for the special ISP function without requiring additional bootstrapper, hardware, connectors, cables, etc. Since the target system's SPI and UART are sort of OR'ed together, this does not allow the target system to use both serial channels at the same time.