I'm upgrading to Mach4 and want to run it on either a Win 10 or 11 PC without a parallel port. Can I use a USB to DB25 cable, or do I need to get a new controller?
Thanks
Warren

You need to purchase a Motion Controller such as (and just for example) the CNC Drive UC100. The USB to DB25 cables do not work with Mach.

Tweakie.

Hi,
there is a legacy parallel port for use with Mach4, its called Darwin and attracts a $25 license fee. I think its called Darwin because its the last of the breed.
It was written by Art whom also wrote Mach3's parallel port driver at the beginning of time.

It was meant and intended as a cheap way for people to try Mach4.....but it has limitations. For instance a lot of the realtime supports are missing, lathe threading for example,
and THC for another. They will not EVER be included in the driver, so don't get your hopes up.

Secondly it is still a parallel port driver and MUST run on 32 bit Windows OS's, Windows 7 and Windows XP. The same problems that beset Mach3's parallel port driver like
stuttering and stalling should other software compete for CPU service beset Darwin also.

So provided you have a 32bit PC you might be able to get the G540 to work from a DB25 parallel port. Note that does NOT include any USB to DB25 converter, they may drive
a printer OK, but no good for Mach. The UC100 that Tweakie recommended has an FPGA inside and is way WAY WAY cleverer than any USB to DB25 converter, not withstanding
that is exactly what it looks like. If a UC100 appeals do not buy one of the many hundreds of Chinese rip-offs on Ebay or Amazon, buy genuine or don't waste your money. The rip-offs
are not a patch on the real thing.

In reality Mach4 is intended for use with an external motion controller as Tweakie has recommended. I use an Ethernet SmoothStepper and have done for eight years.
It is arguably the best, modestly priced ($200 or less) Mach4 motion controller on the market. Some of the other competing modestly priced motion controllers like the UC series form CNCDrive, the PoKeys57CNC
etc miss on some of the realtime supports that the ESS has as standard, the most glaring, but not the only one is realtime THC. The Hicon has all the normal realtime supports but is very much
more expensive, but otherwise a good unit.

There is one Chinese made Mach4 ready controller made by XHC, but the plugin is hopelessly buggy. It does not support the editable GUI for instance, you are restricted to wxMach as a screenset.
Avoid like the plague.

Craig