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.