The sad thing highlighted to myself in this thread is that you are so close to writing an assembler file to do exactly what you want, but is further confused by some form of intermediate language like Visual Basic. Don't they teach anyone assembler at college anymore?
Yes you have to move the CE, RD and WR lines manually, it can take time to get it correct, maybe cumbersome but it's highly effective, fast and MAKES you understand what's going on at the interface. It also makes you a far better programmer for the future and less reliant on someone elses routines that may have bugs in them....but that's another thread entirely.