old fashioned COM

[mark]

I am a newbie at this, and haven't done a lot of programming in some
years.  The book I have on Python describes a lot about programming
internet and email apps.  I need to just select a COM port, set
parameters like baud rate, parity, etc. and do a file capture in dumb
terminal mode.  This may seem to simple in todays world, but I'm trying
to log some events from a piece of equipment that uses serial I/O.  

Help?

Thanks
Mark