Hi SterlingY,

Don't know your level of expertise, but if it would help, there's a book out for Basic Stamps (these are PIC's) called "The Microcontroller Application Cookbook" that has a chapter on expanding I/O using only a few port pins and it has some code examples. Volume 2 also has some interesting I/O examples. These books are available from www.parallax.com and www.nutsvolts.com and probably from Amazon.com.

HTH,

BobK