Actually, I might just go the microcontroller route now. I know overall
it would make things easier (and allow for future development) but I
was afraid of getting into SOIC chips (I'm an EE with a soldering problem :)
and/or requiring the purchase of a EEPROM programmer.

After looking closer at some of the PIC stuff, it looks like their are cases
were you can do serial programming and some come in DIP packages. Yeah!

Ok. I'll get back to you all once I put all this stuff together (or have more
questions.)

Thanks

Brett