Gaunt1969 wrote: I went with the 7i96 and all I can say is wow.
I had some hiccups upgrading linux cnc. But the card was easy to set up and it double my speed. Right away with the first jog you could tell the signal output whas much cleaner than the parallel bob just from the sound.
I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation if I had got one of these from the start.
If anyone is reading this and wondering if the ethernet card is worth the extra money over the parallel bob, buy it and dont look back.
I've use both Mesa cards and parallel port machines. And my opinion on the subject is this. While the Mesa products are excellent, and well worth their cost. There are plenty of CNC application where their cost just isn't justified. For example a basic 3 or 4 axis router with stepper motors and without too high of a step count (1000-2000 steps/inch) software stepping with a parallel port is more than adequate, and there shouldn't be any significant performance benefits from switching to a Mesa card. Now if you throw in high step resolutions and/or high speed servos, now the benefits become much more worthwhile.
I do not notice any smoothness issues on any of my parallel port machines, but I am running PCs with very good latency on those parallel port machines (less than 15us worst case and average jitters well under 10us.)
