"Newer" Lenovo Tinys with Parallel Port?

Hi All, 
While I just received some lovely Mesa boards for my mill project which will run on an older, seconhand Lenovo Tiny with a likewise secondhand touchscreen, I am thinking ahead here for a cheaper way to run Lcnc on a small lathe. 

I am based in Asia and can tap into the Chinese used market easier, faster and way cheaper than I can source new or used from US/Eu and I also do need to do the next project a bit cheaper. 

I just realized that quite a lot of the 2017 onwards Tinys have full PCIe slots which via a cheap riser should be able to accept regular PCIe expansions boards like parallel port ones.
So, for the small lathe project which wont need many IOs and just 2 axis, I was thinking of going old school with parallel port and one of those cheap 5-axis parallel boards from China. Granted, a Tiny with PCIe will be slightly more expensive than my older one without PCIe but not by much. And the riser adapter and extensions can be had for just a few bucks, too. At the end of the day, maybe I wont actually save more than 100-150 bucks or so but I am willing to give it a go. 

Now, the simple/stupid question: Parallel port is still cool for Lcnc, right? I wont lose out on any software functionality other than having a much less swank, feature rich and well built board like a Mesa and having to use a different configuration tool? But once setup, I can expect it to run the same as on a Mesa?

Here's that 5 axis Par board I mentioned (less than USD 3):
 

Oh, before you say RPI 5 can do Par Port too and there's even a hat to interface it to this exact 5 axis board, I think I'd prefer to stick to a Lenovo Tiny. The latter wouldn't even cost much more and I could keep a copy of Windows on it for when/if I need to tune servos and such. 
 

Parallel port is perfectly usable.
You may find you will you need an RTAI kernel.
Tuning for a machine that has to run a base and servo thread is a bit harder than one that just requires a servo thread.

unknown wrote:

Parallel port is perfectly usable.
You may find you will you need an RTAI kernel.
Tuning for a machine that has to run a base and servo thread is a bit harder than one that just requires a servo thread.

Ah, yes, the kernel, too. But that's good news. Thanks a lot for weighing in. 

I think it will either be this route or, dare I say it, a laptop;). But then it will likely be with a Mesa card. That said, there are some Lenovo laptops with a slot for those PCIe cards so parallel port may still be an option:
 

Be wary of those devices, they could just be a USB to parallel port. I bought a similar device thinking it would be a proper hardware serial port, but what it actually was a a USB to serial port.
Getting the right laptop to work can be a bit of a hit & miss exercise. Tho it's not something that I would recommend for a parallel port setup. Mesa maybe.

unknown wrote:

Be wary of those devices, they could just be a USB to parallel port. I bought a similar device thinking it would be a proper hardware serial port, but what it actually was a a USB to serial port.
Getting the right laptop to work can be a bit of a hit & miss exercise. Tho it's not something that I would recommend for a parallel port setup. Mesa maybe.

 

Ah, I hadn't thought about the "hidden" USB being a risk at all. 

Tommy Light has a good little thread on Lenovo laptops that he has gotten to work great on production machines so if I go down this path, I would try to get one of the ones he has had luck with. But yes, he does run them on Mesa Ethernet cards. 

Thanks again, let's see what I'll end up with. This is research as of now though I do think I'll pick up the lathe within a few weeks.