On the PC side, without PROCOMM, it would be possible to "COPY COM1: FOO.TXT" but I don't know how 9600/n/8/1 could be set in advance (IIRC setting it as a printer to force the baud rate altered the device so it could not be read).

Generally speaking, all of the pre-PC microcomputers implemented serial ports, which is the first choice in pulling data off of them (including binary data with XMODEM and its variants).