With the MCP23S17, both the SPI and I2C versions have address pins. On the = SPI version, you can put 8 chips on one CS line.=20 Best Regards, Steve Maroney Business Computer Support, LLC Mobile Phone:504-914-4704 Office Phone: 504-904-0266 Fax: 866-871-7797 -----Original Message----- From: piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU [mailto:piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of= Jan-Erik Soderholm Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 5:02 PM To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. Subject: Re: [PIC] SPI Fanout with large numbers of MCP23S17's To let 1 CMOS output drive (only!) 8 CMOS inputs should never be any real problem. I saw a circuit with at last 100's of driven CMOS inputs when I saw your questions at first. You never told us that it was only 8 inputs you was looking at, did you ? :-) Note also that the I2C version has 3 address lines, so you can run 8 devices on the same I2C bus without separate address och chip-select lines from the PIC. In the SPI case you need to have a separate CS line for each MCP23S17, either as separate I/O pins or through some extra address decoder chip. Jan-Erik. On 2010-09-12 23:45, Forrest Christian wrote: > Unfortunately I need the pins to behave much like a pin on a > traditional PIC.. that is, being able to be individually driven high or > low or read as an input. > > Basically I have weak pullups/pulldowns on everything - and then I set > everything to a weak high pullup then pull one pin low and see which > other pins went with it. Then do the same for a pulldown, except I pull > one pin high. Repeat for each of the 128 pins... > > I think I'm just going to try this with the eight I need for this design > and see how it works. I realized I actually have two SPI devices on > this pic so perhaps I'll be ok... > > -forrest > > On 9/12/10 7:10 AM, Isaac Marino Bavaresco wrote: >> Em 11/9/2010 22:36, Forrest W Christian escreveu: >>> I am building a test apparatus (ok, it's a cable mapper) which will >>> require around 256 bits of I/O on a pic system. Maybe even more. >>> >> If you don't need the pins to be bi-directional you could use the >> 74HC595 (output only) and 74HC597 (input only). They work serially and >> can be daisy-chained, you would save all the chip-selects. >> >> Isaac >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Fale com seus amigos de gra=E7a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger >> http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/ > --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .