Cheers Hood your a star, can you direct me to where I can get one from. Jim

This is the guy that makes them but his site is down at the moment http://www.warp9td.com/
You can also get them from a few agents.
Jeff Birt is one I know of in the USA and Peter Homann in Ozz, there are others but dont know of any in the UK.
Hood

The SmoothStepper go 'in between' the PC and the rest of your machines electronics. You can think of it in a similar way (physically) as adding a parallel port card to your PC to use with Mach. By that I mean with a parallel port card you plug the card into the PC and plug your parallel port cable from the card to the machine. With the SmoothStepper you plug the SmoothStepper into the PC via a USB or Ethenet cable and then the run your parallel port cable from the SmoothStepper to the machine.

If your machine is/was working with the parallel port then it should work without much fuss with the SmoothStepper as well. There are different ways to mount the SmoothStepper. Some guys prefer to mount them in the PC case, some guys in the machine's case, and some folks who have an existing working system and don't want to do any rewiring prefer to use a 'SmoothStepper in a can' which I developed a few years ago: http://www.soigeneris.com/motion_control_and_i_o_boards-list.aspx see the bottom of page.

Hope that helps...

Are there any UK suppliers of Smoothsteppers and BOB's that use ethernet or USB?  Just thinking it may work out cheaper than paying in USD and then the import when Customs slap their bit on.

Not as far as I know.
Hood

Thought as much....google had failed me....

Hi EJ found this for UK smooth steppers.

http://www.syiluk.com/#!cnc-products/vstc4=smoothstepper

Oh well done Jim, I didn't find that one......it looks good to me, no expert though am I, I wonder what Hood will think?

Looks to me like it would possibly cost more to get in the UK. Suppose   it depends on that price including VAT or not but if it doesnt then its going to be half as much again even if the UK grabs you for customs charges
 $280 plus 20% = $338 plus post, if it does already include VAT then not so bad.
If I recall the ESS is $195 then you will possibly have  customs charge of £10 ($16) plus VAT so total before post would be $253. Post from the USA shouldnt be that expensive. Thats the worst case from the USA, sometimes you get lucky and things sail through without customs so that would be $195 plus post.
One drawback to getting from the USA is the time of year, likely there will be a slow down due to Christmas post so it may take a while to arrive rather than the normal few days.

Hood

Hi Hood the units are in the UK, the USB one is £158 +p&p the earthnet one is £175 +p&p. (click on stepper units) Be interested on you comments on the full £600+ package, it seems a bit steep in price but might be good for a dirty dusty workshop. I have bought stuff from Syil UK they offer a good service and are based in London. As usuall the smooth stepper units are made in China and you can buy them in large batches on a couple Chinese industrial site (who wants a 1000 units !!!!!)
I had a problem with a drive card for a Syil machine for a trainee I was teaching and Hugh (the owner) was great, he just replaced it free of charge. The machines are not my cup of tea and are not a patch on my old Denford Triac but do the job.