My CNC PC (XP, Dell circa '99 w/native parallel port) just died -- long story but involves pilot error re-purposing it to fix a Land Rover(!). So I just built a PC from component parts. For ~$400 I now have a lightning fast PC (specs below). This PC runs Win7 64-bit (Intel dual-core i3, 4GB). Since it was piecemealed I had to buy a parallel card (actually serial/parallel combo card). This homemade PC rivals my $2,500 dual-proc quad-core Mac Pro [8 cores w/10GB of RAM] in single task activity. (Of course my Mac Pro crushes the new PC -- I run Mac OS, Win7, Win2k, AND Ubuntu simultaneously at full speed on my Mac Pro. Yes, I'm spoiled.)
The tragedy is that I first installed Win7 32-bit, realized what I had done, and reinstalled 64-bit clean -- obviously, since it's a 64-bit architecture. Then I spent an hour getting all the right apps installed, drivers configured right, tweaking & customizing it, and THEN I realized that Mach3 only had 32-bit parallel port support. So while you guys have been going on for a while about Mach3/Parallel/64-bit/USB/etc, I just realized this TODAY. Ugh.
Ok, so now what?! I have these choices:
1) Reinstall clean with 32-bit, lose the 64-bit benefits, but gain Mach3 native parallel port support
2) Stick with 64-bit, buy something like SmoothStepper, but deal with yet another component (and cost)
3) Stick with 64-bit, try a VM (XP mode or VMware), and hope that the Mach3 driver works -- while everyone has hated on this, I've never seen a confirmation or denial
4) Stick with 64-bit, take my dormant Arduino, and take this to the next level, albeit months later
#1 *seems* wrong long-term. #2 *seems* unnecessary. #3 will definitely involve a lot of work and maybe little results. #4 means lots of time. Where are all the #4 folks?! Shouldn't CNC be USB (3.0!) now?! The signals running over these wires are not uninterpretable. I don't doubt that the Mach3 parallel driver works magic; but that's because it's parallel -- it shouldn't have to for it's purpose. Even if you had a Calabi–Yau number of axes on your CNC, it wouldn't be soaking up bandwidth or confusing components. Hopefully someone will point me to the Arduino solution to this problem so I can go with #4. But right now I'll probably try #3, get frustrated, and end up on #2 or #1.