I'm pretty sure  USB to serial port adapters exist for MACs which sort of
emulate the behavior of a standard COM port... It might be worth looking
into.  I did a quick google search and came up with this:

http://www.sfcable.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=UB30-40&Category_Code=72&source=overture

Looks like for about $20 you could use just about any db9 serial
programmer, but I don't know enough about it to make any guarantees.

: Hi Everyone,
:
: I'm trying to find a way to upload firmware to my PICs through the USB
: port on my Mac running Linux. I've not got any serial or parallel ports on
: it.
:
: The main PICs I'd like to program are the 16f62x's and the 16f87x's.
:
: Microchip sell a "Flash starter kit" which seems to use the 16C745 to hook
: directly to the USB port, but it only supports 20pin devices, so the '877
: is out. There's also some linux software for it here:
:
: http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/users/olawlor/projects/2003/microchip/
:
: I'm a bit stuck on how to sort out the 16f87x's though. I'd prefer to buy
: something not too expensive, but if I gotta do it myself, so be it. I'm
: thinking of something like Wouter's Wisp628, but with a 16c745 instead of
: a 16f628 in it.
:
: Does anyone know of an alternative to building my own USB programmer?
:
: Neil (picdude) was writing some nice webpages on linux and PICs, but he
: seems to have dissappeared and his pages aren't up to date. Is he still
: with us?
:
: Cheers,
:
: Tim

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.