Should also mention that I still regularly use serial ports, both at home and as part of my job. Whilst USB converters are available, my experience from work is that they don't always do what you want if you're trying to do something a bit non-standard (unusual data rates or word lengths - the sort of thing I often have to do). PCI (or PCMCIA) cards do generally work for these applications though - usually better than the onboard ports. Also just remembered that the PC oscilloscope I have in work connects by parallel port http://www.picotech.com/digital_oscilloscopes.html - it's just my home PC which I've never connected commercial kit to that way! Chris -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist