Terry,

wise choice in ditching the parallel port and going with a motion controller. The tb6560 however will still be required should you go with any motion controller as it is a breakout board and a set of stepper motor drivers all in one.

Our, (guys correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure) general opinion is that Mach4 is not quite there yet. Mach3 has more going for it in the sense that there are more plugins, screens, wizards and the like and many more users able to give you help.

Warp9TD have a little program that will make the transition to using the smoothstepper easier on their website however I still prefer to do it manually. It is not that difficult.