ebay score dwt cnc router

[irving2008]

Jase,

Congrats on your new toy. Attached is the pc-nc stuff, downloaded and checked out... there is precious little info in there but:
1/ Its DOS and only DOS :( last bux fix was 2005!
2/ It requires a parallel port NOT a serial port (I suspect the small D-type on the box is for a pendant or similar) and a USB->Parallel wont work reliably (anyway see #1 above... USB and DOS dont mix) Your plotter is serial and very low-speed communications by comparison becuase it takes HPGL commands (which are roughly analogous to g-code, but the plotter internal computer does all the hard work)
3/ pc-nc is just a G-code interpreter... so I see no reason why MACH3 wouldnt work with this...

However MACH3 will require a proper parallel port... there's no getting round that in a cost-effective manner... you need a reasonable Windows PC to run MACH3. ALternatively you could run LINUX/EMC2 on a very low spec PC - a Pentium3 or 4 with 512Mb RAM will do and you can pick them up on eBay very cheaply...