Keelan Lightfoot wrote:

> I would prefer switches with a contact for the OFF position too, so
> that I can use a flip-flop for debouncing, rather than loading down
> the PIC with debounce timing.

  You *are* having a leg-pull here are you not?  "Loading down" a PIC
doing debouncing?  What *else* would it be doing?  You are presumably
going to use a matrix arrangements with diodes on the switches to read
them?  9 lines to a matrix can decode 72 separate contacts quite easily
and a 16F84 has plenty of memory to debounce them all.

  That leaves you with three or four lines to interface to the rest of
the machine.  I daresay you'll need plenty of shift registers such as
TPIC6595s to drive all those lamps, but that's only 2 PIC lines.
--
  Cheers,
        Paul B.