Retrofitting Maho MH500C

Initial thread starter, as well as my first thread on the forum.

Long story short, I have a MH500C year 1984, 4speed gearbox, have not managed to fully get the Philips 432-control to play along with me, so i plan a retrofit trying to use as much of the original HW as possible. I plan to using a Dell PC & Mesa card(s)...

Some info regarding the machine 
- X-Y-Z & spindle drives are analog +-10V, TRK6(spindle) & 3TRM2(x,y,z)
- X-Y-Z-Encoders are linear("glass scale") analog 11uAPP, will be converted to TTL with eg. EXE 602 to TTL signal
- MPG is present and gives TTL signals 
- Spindle feedback - I have not figured out about the existing sensing system for spindle angle(if any) for tapping cycles.

I´m thinking about using ethernet based MESA hardware, but seem like they are usually out of stock everywhere. 

Some options i have been considering:
-7I97(1+ month waiting time), should handle all of the nesesary signals with ethernet connection to PC
-7I77(no stock)+5I25(is in the process of being replaced)...
-7I83 + 7I95T +7I74 (should be available "soon")
-7I83 + 7I95T + additional PCI based NIC  
-Other suggestions?

Some questions:
-Will 7I74 work connected to my standard parallel port, or do i need something like the 5I25 ?
-Will the additional PCI based NIC card work with Debian/LinuxCNC to communicate with the second I/O card?

Rotary SMP, who did an exellent job with his conversion on the MH400, inspired me to go in this direction. Main difference is that i have a 4 speed gearbox and Indramat 5kW spindle motor. for the first stage i will not make the gear change logic and I/O, just do manual gear change.

 

Don't rule out the gearbox just yet. You will have plenty to do but when you get to it, it might be quite simple. I have 8 speeds programmed which  RotarySMP is looking at for inspiration..

Thanks for your keen replies!

The "7i92+7i85+7i83+7i84" seems available in EU and the I/Os seem to be there, but im not sure about the best way to run the communication between cards and the PC!?
To clarify, i have a PC with one parallel and one ethernet port available, installed Debian10 LinuxCNC and latency seems decent.

I have some experience around Windows and Mach3 and GRBL etc. on mills and plasma, LinuxCNC is new, but lets keep the learning curve steep...

Thx! Now i see the picture. I am ordering these four cards and will try to find three EXE602 converters next.

After some off-time from this project I will try to get forward some again. I received my Mesa 7I92TH 7I83, 84 & 85. Now i think i should get the correct firmware loaded to the 7I92 (at least?) so it can communicate forward. Could anyone point me to the correct firmware and "way of working", also is Mesaflash in linux the only way to flash the cards? Did some attempts getting Mesaflash working earlier but encountered issues and got stuck, then i went travelling for work..

Im getting following response when trying to start the installation of Mesaflash according to instructions at github.com/LinuxCNC/mesaflash:

""
$ sudo apt install libpci-dev libmd-dev pkg-config build-essential git
[sudo] password for cnc:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package pkg-config is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package git is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Unable to locate package libpci-dev
E: Unable to locate package libmd-dev
E: Package 'pkg-config' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'git' has no installation candidate
""

(Start to remember now why i have never continued using Linux ever)

thx for the tip. no, but same result after doing this as well