I just picked up a desktop cnc mill and lathe at a school surplus auction. I'm pretty sure they are both sherline, but have been rebranded. They are both supposed to be in working order, but the only software I got was a windows 3.1 program for the lathe. I opened up the back of the mill and it has a SmartStep/3 control board and drivers. Its still wired to a serial connection on the side of the machine. I would kind of like to run Mach3 or EMC, but I'm not really that committed to either. Does anybody know what the serial connection feeds in or out? Does it take G-code directly, or step/directions? Any help would be, um, very helpful.

Thanks!