I'm all for the 4000 series. I have to price them yet though. I'm also for all the learning part. I figure if I can get through this one I will have gained a whole bunch of knowledge which I like.

Now, what PIC is going to be the final choice? Hopefully supported in both my programmer and IC-Prog.

That raises another question though. How the heck do I program a surface mount chip? Is there some kind of adapter for the programmer?

For the breadboarding I will use a regular chip just for ease of use since I'm sure I'll be ripping it out a 100 times until it gets done.

Another idea. What about two smaller PICS talking to each other instead of one big PIC? Does that just complicate things more than they need to be?

Thanks.

Bart