Mach3 and Centroid CNC4E

[chuckmerja]

I've become sort of competent in turning a drawing thru CAM to GCode and
actually cut the part using MACH3 on our CNC'd Grizzly G8689.

I now want to tackle the Bridgeport unit I bought about a year ago. It was
originally a 1974 series II CNC that has been retrofit with a Centroid CNC4
(CNC4E-B24-MD3-80V serial no 1296 circa 1991). I got out the book(s) for
CNC4 and Cencomm and well, this is going to be a real learning experience.
It looks like I can either enter Gcode directly or via Cencomm (for files
under 24K). My question is, is it feasible/practical to use MACH3 as a
front end for this CNC4 or am I stuck unless I do what I would guess to be a
pretty expensive upgrade?? It appears that the controller is 80286 vintage
- at least there is some documentation for such a MB in the paperwork I
received with the mill. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

Chuck Merja

[Hood]

You wouldnt be able to just use Mach, you would need  to redo things, whether that was get different drives that would accept Step/Dir or go with one of the devices that can control analogue amplifiers, Galil DSPMC etc.
Hood