Hi Guys

Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I've been away for a few days and have also been working on a solution. Thanks for all the responses and debates that ensued!

I am now glad to report that everything is working well. It's a bit of a saga but there were a few things wrong. The other two Dell pcs I was using already had a printer ports installed (by Dell). I don't know if by putting the Moschip pci board in was causing a conflict? I also noticed that even with the cnc controller unplugged from the pc, Mach 3 was not working properly. Somehow it is corrupt. It was a version I got with the Chinese machine. Can't remember if it came as a download or a disc but I didn't have either to hand.

I decided to buy a new motherboard for the old original pc that I knew worked prior to buggering it up last winter. Once I had it configured and reinstalled the PCI board and downloaded the demo version of Mach 3 everything started working perfectly. Don't know why but the address for the Moschip PCI board had changed with the new motherboard but once I figured this out - bingo!

The only issue I have now is Mach 3 in demo mode only which only gives me 500 lines of movement. I could spring a few quid for a proper UK version of Mach 3 but I've been reading up on LinuxCNC and wondered how this stacks up against Mach 3 and how similar is it? Will download a copy and give it a whirl

cheers again for everyone's input

Steve