[joeavaerage]

Hi,
using an older PC to run a parallel port driver might be cheap, but that's all its got to recommend it.

In the early days of Mach3 there were no external motion controllers and perforce Machs parallel port driver was the ONLY motion control available for Windows platforms.
Even then, some PCs seemed to do well and others did poorly, no matter what optimisations were done on them.

Assuming you had a useful PC with either an on-board parallel port or a PCI card with one of the complying Mostek ICs then the parallel port would work OK. It was very prone
to stalling or stuttering should the PC be required to run ANY OTHER software, but it would work.

Then came the advent of external motion controllers, of which the UC100 and Ethernet SmoothStepper have been prime examples and are still manufactured today. Removing
the pulse generation task from the PC, which PCs are poor at, meant a marked increase in speed, performance and reliability.

Given the cost of a UC100 or an ESS its hard to recommend trying an old PC with a parallel port. The parallel port, at least on Windows platforms for CNC use, are a decade past their
use by date.

OP has a parallel input port on his machine controller. Thus the Chinese USB boards are not really suitable as they do not have a DB25 (or IDC26) output. They cold be wired to match
OPs control box....but its likely to cause confusion and possibly not work for him.

A UC100 has a DB25 output socket, and could be plugged directly to OPs existing control box.

An ESS has three parallel port compliant output sockets, IDC26's. A single IDC26 to BD25 cable would allow the ESS to be plugged into OPs control box.

Either of these two solutions are the most direct and most highly probable successful solutions. The other solutions, namely a cheap old PC with parallel port or a cheap
USB motion control board might be cheaper but much MORE likely to fail.

Craig

[jort68]

Dear users who replied,

I realized I never thanked you all for your thoughtful answers to my question. I really appreciate the information. I ended up finding an old PC to use rather than the USB solutions detailed in this thread, it was a more direct solution to the problem and not an issue space-wise.

Best,
Justin

[Trizzyrascal]

I'm also really interested in this thread. Hi i'm new here. and new to CNC. I'm in the same situation as Jort68, except i've got a 6040 and a mac for my sins.

I've looked at all the advice you've given and i'm trying to work out the best route forward.

My situation is: I have a CNC Router with a parallel port looks like one of the chinese ones. I would like to get some "middleware" in between to help convert the signals. From this thread, I now understand that the signals from Parallel and USB just aren't the same, which is really helpful to know so thank you for that already, it's super helpful.

My Wife is a designer, so wants to do the designing in Adobe Illustrator on her Mac mainly because she's difficult like that and then export them out as DXF files.

If I buy the UC100 which is actually a pretty good price at £90.00 but then I've got the good ol' problem of software.

Would I be better getting a something like PlanetCNC as that tackles the hardware and the software issue for the Mac? looks to be the same price, but does it do the same thing as the UC100? https://planet-cnc.com/product/cnc-u...r-mk34-4-axis/

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
to my knowledge there is NO credible CNC software solution for Mac platforms.

The most popular and successful CNC software solutions for Windows platforms are Mach (3 or 4), UCCNC, PlanetCNC, and
a few software/hardware combinations like Centroid Acorn.

The other contender is LinuxCNC for Linux platforms.

By all means use Mac as a design platform for CAD and CAM but when it comes to controlling a machine Mach is not in the hunt.

Craig

[mactec54]

Hi,
to my knowledge there is NO credible CNC software solution for Mac platforms.

The most popular and successful CNC software solutions for Windows platforms are Mach (3 or 4), UCCNC, PlanetCNC, and
a few software/hardware combinations like Centroid Acorn.

The other contender is LinuxCNC for Linux platforms.

By all means use Mac as a design platform for CAD and CAM but when it comes to controlling a machine Mach is not in the hunt.

Craig

PlanetCNC runs on most platforms
Windows 64 and 32 bit
Linux 64 and 32 bit
Raspberry Pi 3 and 4
MacOS High Sierra or higher

[mactec54]

I'm also really interested in this thread. Hi i'm new here. and new to CNC. I'm in the same situation as Jort68, except i've got a 6040 and a mac for my sins.

I've looked at all the advice you've given and i'm trying to work out the best route forward.

My situation is: I have a CNC Router with a parallel port looks like one of the chinese ones. I would like to get some "middleware" in between to help convert the signals. From this thread, I now understand that the signals from Parallel and USB just aren't the same, which is really helpful to know so thank you for that already, it's super helpful.

My Wife is a designer, so wants to do the designing in Adobe Illustrator on her Mac mainly because she's difficult like that and then export them out as DXF files.

If I buy the UC100 which is actually a pretty good price at £90.00 but then I've got the good ol' problem of software.

Would I be better getting a something like PlanetCNC as that tackles the hardware and the software issue for the Mac? looks to be the same price, but does it do the same thing as the UC100? https://planet-cnc.com/product/cnc-u...r-mk34-4-axis/

Adobe Illustrator is a great program and works extremally well on Macs as a design software

If a Mac is all you have then PlanetCNC would be your only choice for a control, you have to think about the Cam side though this is where you would take your design DXF file Etc. into cam software and make the G-code program to run on your machine