Sounds like you've decided already - your new years resolution is going to be learning to use LinuxCNC.

In theory the position control loop for your analogue drive could be put on a cheap microcontroller that accepts a step/dir input and effectively converts it to analogue. I wouldn't be surprised if someone's made a widget to do that. I don't think it would make anything easier though, as although you'd save needing to use the mesa cards (as may get away with just parallel ports), it just makes the tuning problem more difficult as you loose the nice interface that LinuxCNC provides (halscope).