Thanks for the info Peter. Moving the ADC off and going for a simpler package is extremely appealing right now. The Atmel controller you offered though has only 15 I/O lines. With an offboard ADC I will need probably 40+ I/O lines as I now have to have an input from a switch telling which analog is to be read, along with three jumper states to be read for each analog along with the LCD output I/O. In the quest for simplicity a lot of this I/O can be eliminated, just nice-to-have functions I was thinking of. In a pnich I can use the 15 I/O.

I wonder if it is possible to get a nice dip-type package with that much I/O. I suspect not.

Will any controller with a UART talk nicely to the ADC?

Re the LcD: I've been looking and looking and apparently HD no longer makes the HD44780U listed in the tutorial here. A screen with an embedded driver makes sense - can you reccomend any that behave exactly as described here? 14x2 to 20x2 is more than enough, alphanumeric only.