The Journey begins.. new to me.. my first CNC - Black Cat

[Fivetide]

Bench is varnished, I have a power breaker fitted and the pooter’s installed –with XP SP3. So the Cat is on the bench, but the serial cable was male to female and I need a male to male as I’m not installing the hardware that came with it.
I need to drills some big holes in the bench to feed the cabled down and move my lamp to the middle, but I’m not paying £20 to use it once so I’ll nip to my dads who no doubt has one from the 1960’s in drawer in his workshop somewhere.
Down side is the hardboard on the bed is held down with what look like Philips screws and the heads are mangled, so somehow I need to get that off to diagnose the tilted bed problem.. well I’m off to CPC in the morning for a serial cable. Then hopefully have a bit of a trial run with her.