Newbie (ageing rapidly!)

[JAZZCNC]

JazzCNC,

I completely agree, after consulting n people I had at least n+1 options! I did consult a lot of people and did my research.

Please don't get me wrong here I'm not having a go at you just pointing out to others these things need research and acceptance that it can't be done on shoestring budget.

Now you say you had advice. Then I suggest you change who you ask because can tell you without a shadow of a doubt no one here would recommend any of those choices you made.
Those that know would never advise USB and nearly always point you to Ethernet-based controllers unless cost was the issue, even then would issue caution regards USB because it's flaky. Or would point to other very capable alternative systems like Linux CNC and Mesa cards etc.

While Mach3 is aging and starting to lack behind others in some areas of software it isn't the problem you have been experiencing. Mach3 is very capable software with 10,000's of users working on whole variety of different types of machines and hardware.

Your problem comes from the fact those cheap or fake controllers have no support for the plug-ins and Mach3 over the years has had many updates which break these plug-ins which are no longer updated.
Any Device is only good as the support from the supplier regards the Plug-in. Without this, it's just becoming an expensive paperweight.

Mach3 does work on 64Bit systems and on Win10 perfectly fine. It's the parallel port driver that doesn't so is restricted to 32bit but PP is dinosaur and only fitting it should go the same way.!

Now in order to help and guide you, we need to know more about the machine and what your needs are.