installing a handwheel (Manual Pulse Generator)

I'd like to install a handwheel (manual pulse generator MPG) for making small controlled axis moves, for edge finding XOYO on a part for instance.
Reading around on the forum, I see a post about using a pair of products from CNC4PC. What confuses me in the post is this sentence:

"This example uses an MPG3 pendant and a C22 pendant interface card from CNC4PC connected to a second parallel port plugged into the PCI slot."

Question is: What about the first parallel port? Is it required also?

Another question: I'm using a Motenc Lite interface card, wihch has four encoder input channels. Mine will be a 3-axis machine and I don't plan to use a spindle encodeer, so that fourth encoder channel is available. Could I just hook up an encoder with a handle to that fourth encoder channel and use the GUI to direct pulses to a particular axis? i.e. is necessary to go the parallel port route at all?

Any guidance appreciated.

The reason for the second parallel port is usually the first is used up with controlling the machine.
In your case you are using a special card to run the machine so the parallel port is available.

or you can use the spare encode counter on the Motec.

You need to change the HAL file to connect the encoder counter to motion module (motmod)
You can use either encoder counter (A software counter connected to the parallel port or the motec)

Motech sample HAL files are hard to come by but maybe you could take a sample from the parallel port and convert it.

here is info on the motec

www.linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/drivers/motenc.html

Here is the pins of motmod:
www.linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/config/emc2hal.html#_axis_joints
look at
axis.N.jog-counts
axis.N.jog-enable
axis.N.jog-scale

Chris M