Gee whiz, Erik, why not stop beating up on guys who simply want to do things differently than you would do them. The good part, as seen from your point of view, should be that YOU don't have to do it that way. It's like raising your kids, Erik. You've got to let 'em learn from their own mistakes, no matter how much it pains you to see 'em do it.

True, the 8255 isn't state-of-the-art, but there are LOTS of app-notes that do something some folks consider useful using an 8255. If those don't happen to use an 805x at the MCU end, the implementor has to figure out how to make the 8255 work with whatever 805x version he's using. Sometimes that's a reasonable approach, and sometimes it's not, but until you know it CAN'T work, there's no need to tell the guy he's a dummy, even if you do regard him as such. Most people are, after all, more afraid of hardware and soldering irons than they are of software and debuggers.

I agree that there are, in most respects, "better" in view of current technology, ways to implement a parallel port, even a parallel port with handshaking, and, if you're really determined, even a pair of ports with handshaking AND separate interrupts, status register, etc, if you don't mind using programmable logic. There's probably nothing sillier than keeping an inventory of TTL-workalikes when just a few SPLD's and CPLD's will do what thousands of TTL's once allowed you to do. My DS89C420 board that's being used for that FDC to USB channel, uses only one CPLD, and that includes the demuxing of the FDC's signals.

RE