Hi Luciano. The use of the encoder was a work-around because I did not have a solution to feed data directly into a USB port. What I have done works perfectly, but it is a crude solution and I want to do this the best way possible. The keyboard encoder was meant to have various arcade buttons connected to it. My pics' software receives serial commands then translates those to simulate buttons being pressed by lowering various port pins connected to the button inputs of the keyboard encoder. I beleive there are serial keyboard encoders ICs but I would like a solution that feeds the commands directly into a USB port if possible. I need to understand a lot more about PC architecture I guess.