Concerning a pin pulling down hard and pulling up soft relates to attributes of a pin used as an OUTPUT. A pin in output mode has NO bearing on the discussion at hand in this thread. Not even a Cygnal part in push-pull mode.

If you use a pulldown resistor in a '51 port pin, you will, when setting the port latch for input (writing a '1'), end up with a voltage divider between the weak pullup and your pulldown resistor for an open input. If you use a pullup (or nothing on ports othet than 0)you will have Vcc for open.

Regardless, I'll take the beer offer anytime

Erik