1. Large chip count - we have suggested other means that address this. Doing it serially isn't necessarily slow. We still don't know how 'fast' you want this. You want it simple - you have a few choices - hc logic - large chip count, GALs - less chip count, CPLDs low chip count, FPGA low chip count and doing it serially at high speed.


2. Worrying - that suggests you don't know what you're doing. Time to do some study and some calcs - no guessing. Read the datasheets, get some numbers, do some calcs - that's what us engineers do. We could do the calcs, but there are too many unknowns for us to give you an accurate answer. That's one reason why we ask for more information. I worry when there are unknowns!

3. Glitches - again, do your timing diagrams and read the datasheets. Glitches only occur if you let them. Again, without all the information - how can we advise you?

4. Fan out problem - I think capacitance might be an issue here. GALs,CPLDs or FPGAs address this problem.

5. What would I do? Probably some totally different to what you're proposing - at this point I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be designing! 10 years ago I may have used discrete logic, nowadays programmable logic rules - if I make a mistake, I just reprogram it. But then again, it might be sensible to use a number of small and cheap micros serially connected to solve the problem or I do the whole thing in a fpga. How many of these I have to make also would influence my design decisions.

A mechanical friend of mine asked me how long his bus would run off one battery and one solar panel. My response was 'I need a bolt - how big should it be?'. Obviously you can't answer either of these questions without some information. The better the information, the better the response.