loading LinuxCNC on old smithy 1240

Super, thank you, I will try that next.
Next step is to get MPG to work, I have been reading the instructions and am a bit lost, docs say the files are in there for versions above 2.6, but I'm not sure exactly what needs to be done to make it work.

that was my initial thought, but it had an error relating to pin  axis.0.jog-scale does not exist. I ran xhc-hb04 manually and was able to read out all the buttons correctly and the jog wheel all responded back. but adding the lines to the ini cause issues.  I'm not sure which files to edit and where the xhc files actually need to reside.
I added lines to the 1240 combined.ini, as I understood from the docs, and i have the xhc files in the same dir as my other config files, but I'm feeling a bit like a fish out of water. I'm sure it is a simple matter of adding the correct lines and putting the correct files in the correct place.

this might be a really dumb question, but do I use the naikey.hal in place of the xhc-hb04 files? or in conjunction with?

I'm sorry, I thought I mentioned it earlier. I have an xhc-hb04 wireless I want to add, it is the main reason I decided to go with the new SW as it was not able to run with the old Ubunto version,