First let me say thank you all for your help with this issue.
Second this is what I have done, instead of purchasing the newer computer with W7 I poked around and found a little out of the way computer repiar shop and asked about used machines with at least the minimum requirements for Mach3 and they set me up with an old Dell (I know)Optiplex GX240, it is running at 1.8ghz with XP Pro, 512mb ram, 20gb HD and a seperate video card with 32mb all for $150. The nice thing is I have enough memory lying around at the house to up the ram to the max at 2gb.
I did not have a chance to run the driver test for Mach yet but it should be fine. Before I payed for the computer last night I made it perfectly clear that if it did not run Mach3 the Optiplex with be returned, the proprietor said that would be fine and then we could go up from the Optiplex to a larger used computer.
Thanks again for you help,
DT
Tom