I have been running Mach3 on XP on an old Emachine T3410 that has a parallel port.
It has been running perfectly for more than 10 years.
No problems yet, but in case the disk drive fails I want a backup system on hand.

I wanted to set up a backup PC with stuff I already have on hand.
I have a couple older PC's that have Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 mother boards.
These boards do not have parallel ports

I can buy PCI cards that have a parallel port, but not sure this would work with Mach3?
Chat GPT says that Mach3 may have timing issues for add on parallel port cards

I realize there are newer methods to using Mach3 without a parallel port, but I want to use the same breakout board and hardware that I am using on system 1
I just want a backup system on hand.

Can someone suggest a route I should take?
I attached an image of one of the mother boards I want to use

Hi EL34,

You should have no issues running Mach3 with a PCI Parallel Port card with your Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 motherboards. However check out this thread before purchasing the PCI card; https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=34848.msg239910#msg239910

Tweakie.

Alternatively use a UC100 USB motion controller from cncdrive https://www.cncdrive.com/UC100.html

This should plug into the parallel port on your BoB and release you from relying on old PC hardware.  I use these on both my lathe and mill.  There was hardly any reconfiguration needed.

Thanks all,
I'll check out the links and get back when I know more.

I ordered a UC100
I actually have two of those Gigabyte motherboards shown in my image above

I retired two desktop PC's recently and went with two of the Beelink mini PC's for my daily desktops.
It's so nice having tiny little boxes on the desk instead of noisy dust sucking big boxes under the desk.

So if the UC100 works out, I may upgrade the older CNC to a newer mother board and a UC100.
I installed a fresh copy of XP SP3 in the Gigabyte desktop and then installed Mach3
I did a timing test and the timing is rock solid in Mach3

Just curious if anyone here has attempted to run Mach3 on one of these mini PC's?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6G965BC?th=1

Not that exact model but an older Dell equivalent.  It runs absolutely fine under Windows 10 (I don't know about Win 11) using UC100 motion controller.  The computing load of Mach3 other than the MC is very small.

Yeah, you would not need one of the powerful Mini's for Mach3

The old desktop system I have been using for many years is pretty wimpy and Mach3 runs great on it.

I have XP corporate, win 7 corporate, Win 10 pro disk, so I could install any of those if W11 is a problem.

Not that exact model but an older Dell equivalent.  It runs absolutely fine under Windows 10 (I don't know about Win 11) using UC100 motion controller.  The computing load of Mach3 other than the MC is very small.

Just curious as to which mini pc you are using?