Well, I might be a bit late to the party, but:
Okay, in the simplest of operation, 12V to one side of the coil and momentary touching of the other side of the coil ( negative ) to ground will jump the spark and tell you if the coil is working. Then you might want to turn on the ignition and touch the negative side to ground momentary and see if you get a spark, if yes, the ignition is working.
Then open the distributor and turn over the engine and make sure the rotor turns.
I would then suspend the coil wire from the coil over a ground and see if you get any spark. No spark?
Remove the any "ignition boxes" and run the distributor old style to remove the distributor and ignition setup from the problem.
Old style is 12v ( controlled by the ignition switch ) to a .82 Ohm resistor, then the resistor to the positive side of the coil. The negative side goes to the distributor.
There are two problems that come up more than others, good ground and good 12V.
I hope this helps or spurs another idea to fix it.
