I am moving across 1300 miles and I am not moving anything I cannot take with me on an airplane. It is expensive to move all of my belongings. It may be cheaper to buy new furniture, dishes, cooking utensils, and other essential items. It may take some time just to move my personal belongings. So I cannot bring any of my desktop computers. I am bringing my laptop computer. Sooooo...

I have a usb to serial adapter and an ethernet to serial adapter or they may be the other way around. I wonder if either of these would work for transferring firmware onto the empeg and debugging. If not are there any alternatives?

The USB-Serial adapters are what I normally use now for poking at my empegs. Mine all have "Prolific" branded chips inside them, though I'm not sure if it really matters which chip nowadays.

I have also had success with a USB-to-serial adapter that uses the FTDI chipset, in particular it's the FT232R chip.

I bought one of these babies. For some reason it's gratifying to not have to chain together cables and adapters to connect (I think it uses the same chip Tony recommended).