Why doesnt Mach3 support usb instead of parallel port?
To use a USB device you first need a device with enough independently addressable inputs and outputs, this is what Art Fennerty's parallel port driver achieves through a parallel port, then the manufacturer of that device will have to develop and support (at least until it's fairly mature) a plugin for Mach3.
Even if you had a USB device with a parallel port on the end it's driver would have to support individual pin addressing and you'd still need a plugin to allow Mach3 to run a piece of non-standard hardware.
We currently have all the USB devices for which manufacturers have been bothered to develop plugins, so you see, it's hardware manufacturers that are behind the time and not Mach3.
There are still suitable cards available but you do need to ensure that the data voltage for your BOB and card are compatible (you could do this with your own buffering hardware if you did a little research and built a board;-) ), I haven't contacted StarTech to check the logic voltage for this -
http://www.startech.com/uk/Cards-Adapters/Parallel/1-Port-PCI-Express-Base-Parallel-ExpressCard~EC1PECPS - but it is IEE1284 and specifically NOT USB so if it's compatible with your BOB it may provide a way forward.
Failing that there are still a lot of cheap, ex-corporate desktop PCs which are up to the job and likely to give many more years of service.
Until last year I was using a pair of HP Compaq d530 PCs which had run for over 5 years, after the live machine became problematic I swapped out for the spare and investigated alternatives, now I'm using a pair of HP Compaq dc7100s (£40 each - delivered) for CNC and am working on options for their replacement/retirement.
Tweakie has offered a solution which allows you to avoid "Obsolete Technology" but there are thousands of CNC machines out there happily running on "Obsolete Technology" so if it's Function and not Fashion you're interested in then it's still a perfectly viable setup
Regards,
Nick
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