In what way do you feel the Holtek chips are too limiting ?

Regarding Mach3, I would have to add another parallel port card to get anymore outputs than what I have and are using now and I don't want to go that route at this point even though they are cheap.

Why wouldn't THIS with the companion receiver (just as an example), from Rentron not work for me ?

I mean if this remote can turn LEDs at the receiver on and off why couldn't it activate a PIC programmed with the correct messages and send these corresponding messages to the LCD ?

I'll look into the FSK modules also, I may already have them ???