Hello everyone

Hello everyone,
I am new to this community and new with cnc as-well. I have experience building a 3D printer and tweaking its firmware and programing some scripts to generate and clean up 3D meshes but a cnc seems to be much more complex. I bought a 2KW spindle with a VFC, nemas23, stop buttons and a cheap generic 5 axis breakout board with optocoupler isolation that connects directly to the montherboard of the computer via a passive parallel port adapter.
I still have no idea about how most of this stuff works but I hope it will not be an odyssey. Do you have any suggestions on how to start? Sort of like the "hello world" in programing.
Thank you and regards

Fast = find an old PC with parallel port, a cable for it, download LinuxCNC ISO, burn, install, wire drives directly to that cable for parallel port = make chips
Cheap = see above
Easy = get a Mesa 7i96S and see above, minus the parallel port stuff
Good = se above this
Very good = see above this
Extremely good = get a Mesa 7i95T as you can later add encoder or glass scales to anything.
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For now, download the ISO on the downloads page and use it to boot any PC or laptop in Live mode, test the included sim configurations and the included GUI's as much as you like, it will not delete anything on the hard drive ... unless you explicitly ask it to.

This video of mine talks about 3 paths with Linuxcnc from simple/cheap through to more complex solutions.


Subsequent videos walk through a basic controller config for parallel port and spindle which is more or less exactly what you have, Next video will be using mb2hal for spindle control with RS485 Modbus which will free up 2 more pins to  let me add mist coolant.