Ok, so am I just out of luck using some kind of loop to reduce code and make it easier to modify the in the future if I want to use ports ABCDE? Not because I have them spread out but I just have that many serial devices I want to talk to. What is the reason why there are only 2 ports at a time that you can reference with a pin "number".

Can I change PORTL and PORTH during runtime to other ports?

Thanks.