Look honestly unless there is some feature you absolutely must have that is the later versions I would stick with what you have. Even more so if you are using the parallel port. As the later installs do not use an RTAI kernel, which is best for parallel ports.
I think JT runs a lathe that is still on a version of Linuxcnc that runs on Ubuntu 8 or something like that back when the project was called emc2.
Unless you have a download of the image file that passes the md5sum test you are on the road to nowhere. Get that sorted first if you want to proceed.
Before anything back up your Linuxcnc folder that is in your home folder so you don't lose any of your Configs if things go bad.
It may help if you can give some info regarding the machine, are you using a parallel port or not, the CPU on the computer you wish to use, I don't want to look up the specs of the computer you are using as the same model can have different CPU, memory HDD and so forth.
