I'm thinking it could make sense to tin a small strand of wire to make
   a fine probe, and see if I can detect activity on any of the chip's
   pins when the programmer probes it, using my cheap pocket oscilloscope.
   Doing that, I expect to find a way to use my oscilloscope to make a log
   of logic behavior on a pin. Maybe I could then log the logic behavior
   of all the pins.
   I glanced at the source code, and it looks like it uses bitbanging to
   set each clock tick, without regard to a constant time base or
   anything.
   I could glance a little further to see what kind of activity is
   expected on each pin.
   I could also attach leds to see the activity, if I have any.