ryan pogge wrote:

> I did go ahead and Buy a cheepo keyboard for $5.95, from which I
> pulled the controller chip...

  Very pragmatic.

> I hooked up individual buttons to the correct traces. I still haven't
> figured out how to interface the 4x4 to it though since pressing a key
> would activate more than one set of the keyboard controller chip pins.

  I think you mean the problem is that your 4 x 4 matrix keyboard would
have a fixed encoding as a "chunk" of characters e.g.:

 1 2 3 4     ... while the MEMKEY allows whatever encoding you choose
 q w e r    for the individual keys.
 a s d f
 z x c v      What is particularly interesting about the MEMKEY is that
            it is implemented in hardware as a STAMP clone, using a
16C55 and serial EEPROM, rather than a single 16F84.  It is, it appears,
still much cheaper to use this two-chip combination.
--
  Cheers,
        Paul B.