Re: ADC to Serial port
If you want to use a PIC, it's about as easy as it gets.
A PIC16C771 has 6 lines of 12-bit ADC and you could bit-bang the serial out, but it's a bit old.
The dsPIC30F2011 has 8 lines of 12-bit ADC and a UART to make the serial easier. Should be trivial to do it with this one, even if you've never programmed a PIC before.
Many other MCU's could do the same. Another alternative is a cheaper PIC connected to a quad ADC, again there are *many* to choose from.
You could even do it just with the ADC, a UART and some timing and glue logic, but it would probably end more complicated, bigger and costlier.
Trust me, there are *plenty* of people who know how to do this, you need to decide on exactly what you want (sampling rate, simultaneous or multiplexed sampling, signal conditioning etc) then decide which of the above methods is most appropriate, then try to implement it, at least on paper. People can help you more when you know how you want to acheive your goals.
A final thought: you could do it with just a ADC and a bit of logic, if you used the parallel port to control it all.
For some good ADC's, check these places:
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Cheers,
FoxyRick.