Serial communication help

[dpeterson3]

I was told that there were three ports on the controler and that I could only use the program port. Last year was my first year actually in competition. All my programming knowledge and how the IFI contoller works comes from what I was told. Basically our programmer graduated this year, and all I have to go on is what little he told me. I want to interface the chip with the IFI controller so that it would appear as if the robot was talking. Also, I would not have to be teathered that way. I guess I should have made that more clear. That is why I don't think I can send commands from the laptop. If I understand correctly, my laptop can not send commands from the OI to the robot. Any programing tips are welcome also. Everything is stored at our partner school, so I can not access it easily. If we show off the robot, I will only have a day or two to troubleshoot programming. I need it to be close to working the first time. All I have to wrok with right now is the lastest version of MPlab, the MC18 compiler and IFI_Loader that I found online yesterday.