Thanks Clive.
I finally have a bit more time and a purpose to get my CNC projects finished. Yes I will probably end up with the mesa cards, it depends if I can get the Kollmorgen servo drives to work and what I need to interface to them. Build should start in a month once I have a clear idea of what to do. biggest problem is the cross slide!

I will ask on the Linux forum and see what the consensus is but from reading around it seem to like you said, as long as the spindle isn't under powered and it is a good quality VFD then the spindle speed should remain constant. 3HP should be ok but I suppose I could do some test cuts in manual mode and monitor the rpm.

Have you got a build log for the Myford ?