New build with recycled parts on a ridiculous budget 120cm*60cm work area

[m_c]

It is very possible I made it up lol but swear I read that somewhere. I know they broke the PP in 64 bit windows.

Nobody 'broke' the PP in 64 bit. Microsoft just increased security.
Mach is essentially a virus that hooks onto the main windows core, which prior to 64bit or Win8, was unencrypted.
With the advent of 64bit, or Win8, Microsoft moved to a protected/encrypted core, so although Art did say it would be possible to hack it (I think he actually did try..) and still have the PP work, MS changed the encryption regularly with updates, so what might work today, could quite quickly be killed by an update.
He came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth the hassle. Even though it was possible, it would be a minefield to install, get working reliably, and to stay working. External controllers are far cheaper than they used to be, eliminate a whole host of problems, and should give far better performance.

Linux on the other hand, the core is open source, so you can do pretty much whatever you want.