NO, NO!!

I am the one TEACHING the electronics merit badge. I have been doing electronics for many years as a hobby AND I work in electronics (mostly microwave communications)

Alas, I am not the greatest programmer... I would love to spend more time programming and playing with the PIC micro's. But I have a day job and kids...

The merit badge just requires the Scouts to build a simple electronic project. I really want to expose them to the wonderful world of microcontrollers. I realize they won't be able to understand all the programming at this point. But, if I can get them to heat up a soldering iron and build a neat scrolling text "necerchief slide" they might just get hooked on electronics and even a great career. I do plan on explaining the basics of the program, though.

I need to keep the wiring simple... so I want to just use 8 pins on each side of the 16f690 in the order they come off the chip. So I need to be able to write an 8 bit word to the 8 somewhat unrelated port pins (as detailed above).

Thanks for your reply... I will take time to decipher your hints...

Question: does your suggestions apply to writing out to the pins as well as reading in from the pins? Please, more detail if possible.

And others... please chime in here I need all the help I can get.

I have not recieved the 8x8 LED matrix yet or I would post my schematic. I just need to figure out if it is possible to write an 8bit word to 8 mixed pins at one time.

Thanks