A quick and dirty method....I think there is three wires going to the coil (pos, neg, signal, and possibly a tach lead..so maybe four)
I used to identify pos and neg with a test light, then the signal lead should flash when the engine is cranked if the coil pickup or crank sensor, whichever the car has that I'm working on, if so the module and pickup are OK.
If there's signal but no fire, the coil is bad. No signal takes you back to your trigger or module. Test with an ohmmeter, like he said...some parts stores have a bench tester for those internal modules.
Reman distributors aren't real expensive, if you consider the cost of the pickup and module seperately. As long as the new distributor comes with them...gotta be sure to ask.