Once you've decided to use an external memory configuration, the pins used for that are gone, right?

Now you've got to save the remaining pins for other useful work. Someone (Grant Beattie) posted that you could save a pin by grounding R/W*. I then replied that there are lots of things that you then can't do with the LCD because you've chosen to operate open-loop and won't be able to read from the device at all.

Does that remind you of where this originated?

I'd point out, again, that it's not useful to tell the guy using external memory that it's a bad idea. He wants to know how to do what he's asked about in that mode. Answering a different question doesn't help.

RE