I am not sure when you mean with Port A is a digital input only read register. Port A can be used as a general purpose I/O but the chip used in your module is the 48 pin package which contains only Bit 0 of Port A. Your module is using it as the SDA line to connect an I2C EEPROM.
KH@SRNL wrote:PTAD is the general purpose digital input / output portPORTA is the digital input only read register