Hi everybody,

Hopefully this is the right forum for this question. There are so many sub-forums, confusing as to which is the correct one.


Looking for a single board computer / motion control card recommendations for my CNC build.

i'm retrofitting an old Dyna 2400 machine with servo motors and gecko G320x servo drives. The G320x treats servos just like steppers, needing a step and direction signal.

I'm looking for recommendations on:
- Motion control card (Ethernet Smoothstepper, UC100, Dynomotion Kflop, multiple options from Galil, etc...)
- Single board computer recommendation (there are a LOT out there)
- Which OS to run on my SBC



I want to use a real motion controller, not depend on a parallel port. Plus i want more I/O than a single port can provide
It looks like LinuxCNC doesn't work with any of the motion control cards above? so looks like i'm stuck with Mach3 (or mach4)? the LinuxCNC supported hardware page lists a bunch of seemingly older, and expensive hardware for this LinuxCNC Documentation Wiki: LinuxCNC Supported Hardware
Since i'm stuck with Mach3, i assume Win XP or Win 7 (32 bit) for the OS?
Which SBC should i use? Seems like there's 100 different ones available. With a motion control card, doesn't seem like a ton of work for the PC. I don't want to just randomly pick one. What devices have other people used successfully?

Thanks,
Mike