In a message dated 97-12-22 15:33:02 EST, you write:

<<
 There is another method, which I have tried, and it does work, but may
 offend the squeamish. It requires only 1 port pin. Basically it involves
 connecting the three switches through three different resistors to +5V.
 Values of say, 10K,22K and 47K would do, from memory. The other side of
 the switches is joined to form a rail, connected back to a schmitt
 trigger input on the PIC. A small capacitor (0.1uF) is connected to
 ground from this rail.
  >>
Don't feel squeamish! This technique works well and is quite reliable.  A lot
of the old VCRs with wired remote use exactly this same trick.  I have used it
on several products.  In fact in one case it totaly blew away an engineer that
was hired to reverse engineer my design.  He couldn't figure out how I used 1
bit to read a 5 position rotary switch, and wound up redesigning it from
scratch!.  I used a pic84 and a single PCB (This was all very small for a hand
held medical instrument)  He had to use a PIC73 and two boards sandwiched
together!
His design failed in the field because of surface mount connector failure
between the two boards.  They only made a hand full of his design and then
went out of business!

Good luck
Dave Duley