> In my circuit, I am using all the 8 pins of Port B and pin 6 of Port A
> as inputs to detect the closing of 9 PB switches. The PIC used is
> 16F628 with

The 74HC165 (parallel-serial) works OK for up to 8 and takes just
3 pins. I've also tried and used the 74HC251 and 4051 multiplexers

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