So let me preface my questions by letting everyone know that I'm already way out of my knowledge depth, but I'm trying to learn more about C and electronics in general, so I've forced myself to learn by buying a Kflop and Kanalog boards, but I'll need your patience as I'm still very much over my head at this moment. If these questions have already been addressed I apologize, but there is a lot to learn and a lot of information to try and sift thru.

I have a little CNC lathe that I've been running with mach3 and generic breakout boards to get everything to work. Well, I've always wanted linear encoders to give me true position feeback, so I bought the Kflop and Kanalog boards as the Kanalog seems like the best option for reading the encoders. So the situation I find myself is I need to run a bare minimum of one stepper on step/dir signals (my ATC), but preferably 3 (X,Z, and ATC). It seems the easiest option is to steal the JP5 off Kflop and loose the additional encoder input capability from JP2 on the Kanalog. That's not a problem as I'll only need 3 encoders (X,Z, and an MPG). So my questions are:

A) is that the best option, I know I can get step/dir signals off JP4 &JP6, but I'd have to tap into both of them to get 3 channels.

B) If I tap into JP5 (or if I need to use JP4 and JP6) is there opto-isolation built into Kflop, or will I need a 3rd party break out board to provide that protection?

C) if I were to use JP5, is there any special C-code that needs to be included so the Kflop knows that's no longer connected to the Kanalog? Similar to how there is a need to muliplex JP4 and JP6 if I were to use them?