Awesome thanks again for the advice. So ethernet is the way forward then. That's the way I'm leaning at the moment.
Yes I still have my old XP 32bit disk somewhere which I was planning to use. Although I'm not going to use the parallel port now but I've also heard XP runs Mach 3 better..




Delving a little deeper in controllers, I've come across planet-cnc. More specifically a couple of videos which seem to show off some great features regarding PCB milling which intend to do in the future. (lining up pcbs with a camera mount & mapping an uneven surface)


Would that be a controller that you'd recommend? Or are there others that would be more suitable to what I need? I hadn't seen any videos of camera mounts on cnc machines before so wasn't aware that it could be a possibility. Looking now though I see it's also a feature you can have in Mach 3. Although I've not come across the mapping/warp feature...
(they also seem to have a PCB only controller which I solder up myself which is tempting.. although I'm not sure if it's the latest version.. maybe it's a earlier one..)