Another quick update for those interested. I did a little more configuration of the RPi software today so that when power is applied, it boots to a login prompt, but also starts wifi and a tightvnc server. You don't need to login to the RPi at the console. VNC and wifi will work after it boots. This allows you to essentially use the RPi as a headless box and then connect to it from any machine with a vnc viewer, that is on your network. A little more config would allow you to connect from outside your network. VNC requires you to start a window manager, so if you do this from a client machine, you're going to see something like this...
http://imgur.com/s3ylJkBFrom my Mac desktop, I also have the RPi configured so that I can see the RPI filesystem and copy files to and from the RPi using the OS X finder. That's Minicom running in an Xterm in the Raspian desktop in the Screen Sharing app on an iMac. If you don't want the Raspian desktop, then I suppose you could just SSH into the RPi from your choice of OSs, but you're likely going to have some kind of WM wrapped around your terminal window anyway, but it would likely be a little more responsive than a VNC session. For the retro purists, you're probably better off connecting a display to the RPi and running Minicom from the command line, as discussed in earlier posts. You probably also want to configure the RPi for a static ip address rather than letting DHCP assign whatever.
This is the current hardware configuration.
http://imgur.com/zayWAotA powered USB hub is plugged into an RPI USB port. The same hub also supplies power to the run the RPi (yes, this does work). Connected to the hub is a keyboard, mouse, USB/Serial adapter and WIF dongle. If you want to reuse the hub and other peripherals on other projects, you could leave the hub and WIFI dongle, USB/Serial adapter, etc., outside the Clone case and just run a power cable and USB cable out the back of the Clone...or, hide everything inside. You can also substitute ethernet for WIFI if you have an ethernet RPi.
Win