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Third party software and hardware support forums. / Centroid M-400 conversion to Mach 3?

« on: June 28, 2008, 03:08:36 PM »

 
Hello everyone I am new here and new to cnc in general (very green).  I have recently purchased 5HP MSC Vectrax 10X50 3 axis knee mill with a M400 centroid controller from 1999 with a 486 32MB ram motherboard and a whopping 4 gig harddrive.  The CNC7 software is very limiting and upgrades and add on options from centroid are rediculously priced. 
I was wondering if any of you would be kind enough to throw some knowledge my way.
Can I ditch centroid for Mach3 and still use all my hardware with the exception of a new computer?
This mill has 850 Watt Yaskawa servos and yaskawa driver boards.  The driver boards have one db9 connector each going to a card on the motherboard.  They also have one fiber optic connector each going to the same board.
I am a certified electronics technician so connecting the pots and estop etc should be simple. 
Thanks for your time and knowledge in advance.
Aloha from Maui