My apologies. I was trying to keep my question simple, and ended up making it too simple leaving out some details that could help in answering my question.

We are using an 8051 currently, with 3 ports. We have the code done and working so we dont want to switch to anything that will cause us to have to modify the code too much. We have it coded to use external memory, and we need that memory to still be there if even if the device is turned off for a while. We were going to use and EEPROM, but we need to use all the ports, so there isnt any pins left to connect the EEPROM.

We need an 8051 with 4+ ports (the more the better) OR we need on chip memory. We have looked extensively for alternative chips with no luck(newbies).