Hi Erik,

on using external code execution, you can never read back P2.
Please use a function, executed from the internal code space,
to read back P2.


If no internal code space available:

1. everytime, if you modify P2, store the same value
to a byte in the internal RAM (= shadow register).

2. use DPTR instead of P2

3. you can read back P2 bitwise with using
the JBC instruction (see 8051 manual for details):

mov a, #0FFh
jbc P2.0, tb0
clr acc.0
tb0: jbc P2.1, tb1
...
tb6: jbc P2.7, tb7
clr acc.7
tb7:


Peter