Upgrade issue - old CNC machine, new computer

Hello and happy new year!

I am new to LinuxCNC and are now stuck after an old computer stopped working.
I am humbly asking the community for any help and -or advise.

When i started to work on this machine, the system was as follows:
- Old CNCmachine controlling the rigg,
- CNCmachine was connected with LPT1
- Computer OS (computer no.2) was version 2 (ubuntu based LinuxCNC). (256MB RAM - and just very old)

The system had some issues with low resolution, so i decided to upgrade the computer. After shutting down the computer for upgrade, the computer was dead. I had to replace the whole computer and install the latest LinuxCNC. On the new computer, there was no parport, so i bought a cheap PCI-Parport card and mounted everything for testing.
However, when i detached the HDD to extract the config files, I could only extract some of the user files before the HDD stopped spinning.

My problem now is that I have no clue on what system is connected and how to configure it.
When running LinuxCNC I get a ton of different option i do not know what is doing.
I decided to try step-config, and did get an old config file from the guy that installed the system for more than 10 years ago.
However, when testing, i get no respons from the CNCmachine.

Do anyone have any advise on how to get this system up and going again?
Any advise would be appreciated.

I will off course share the progress if anyone find them-self in a similar situation

I did get a .hal file and conf files, but i believe it was for an older system and not those currently in use. When i tried to import the conf files, I got got a bunch of error messages, mainly about names of pins etc not matching any available names. I did get the pin layout from that file however. The main problem now is that i do not know if there is a problem with the PCI card. (When creating a new config file, I entered the base port as "0", thinking that means auto (from a youtube video)).

I did find a link on pci setup at sourceforge.net/p/emc/mailman/emc-users/...OPO.com/#msg34629799 . As far as I can see, the youtube video must be misleading, as it seems like base port cannot be 0 :). I will have to test it out on Tuesday.

The base port can be 0, this is not an address but rather the first parallel port found (numbered 0,1,2 etc)
This may not work if there is another parallel port in the system (header on MB?) in which case 1 or 2 should work
This does depend on Linux finding the parallel port so it needs to be a PCI parallel port that Linux recognizes

When the base port is "0", I do not get any error messages when running the mill (the new config i made with the pin layout from the old config files), but no reaction is coming from the mill itself. I know everything worked fine before I unplugged the old computer. Is there any way to test if the PCI card is sending out signals? Maybe use a multimeter?

This worked for me.

Find a pinout of the parallel port DB25 connector.
Disconnect the cable at your breakout board
Locate the GND (ground) pins in the cable connector you just removed by referencing the pinout.
Locate an input pin in the cable by referencing the wiring to your breakout board
Open up the LCNC watch pin window and watch your input pin.
Short the input to GND with a small screw driver.
You should be able to see the pin change in the GUI if it is working.
Check a few of the input pins in this manner.