Sharp HCV CNC Knee Mill With Mitutoyo Millstar Control

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I just picked up a knee mill (Sharp HCV) with a Mitutoyo Millstar CNC control with Mitutoyo linear scales on X, Y and on the quill. I don’t know what generation of Millstar this is. 1, 2 or 3? Anybody? Anybody have manuals and documentation for the control?

The Millstar controller is an old Pentium S PC with a Galil DMC-1020 motion card, a whopping 4 megabytes of RAM in a case with monitor, does power on, but there’s a problem with the IDE drive failing to boot. Bad IDE hard drive would be my guess.
The PC has PCI (but I think no PCIe) slots.

It has Glentek brushed DC servo drives for X and Y axes.


They replaced the head with a 3HP Gromax variable speed head. I don’t know anything about Gromax. Anybody have manuals they can share?

My kids have been helping me clean off some of the grit and dirt and rust with Scotchbrite and WD-40. The Y axis definitely shows some wear and a bit of scoring on the ways, but the overall machine is pretty solid.


Anyone have manuals for the Sharp mill?
Docs for Mitutoyo Millstar?
Docs for Gromax 3HP variable speed head?
Recommendations for way oil? Spindle oil? ...
Anybody have a Millstar hard drive that I could clone?

Is it worth it to try to resurrect the Millstar controller?

Or, would it be better/faster/easier/cheaper to try to convert it to LinuxCNC or Mach 3 CNC?
How to use the existing Glentek brushed DC servo drives? I'm guessing they take 0-10V input, but not sure.
How to use the existing Mitutoyo linear scales?

So, apparently the Galil DMC-1020 motion controller is a pretty old ISA card and only 2 axes at that.
So getting the Millstar control going is probably not the best option.

What sort of PC, breakout board, pulse generator, ... is a good fit?

If you use LinuxCNC there are a couple of analog servo interface options
You will need analog +-10V outputs and encoder inputs (plus misc I/O for limit switches ,spindle, coolant etc)

I think the most common analog servo interfaces for LinuxCNC are Pico systems PPMC and the Mesa 5I25/7I77 card set
You will need a relatively modern PC (well 10 years old is probably OK)

Thanks!
What about pulse generators like SmoothStepper (ethernet)?
I think I actually have a couple of G320 Geckodrives. I’ll have to look.

Also, what are the requirements on interfacing an MPG?
Any good, I expensive pendants or MPGs to recommend?