Well I have made a little progress with the build...at least on the computer side. I got my ZOTAC ZBOX C Series Passive Cooling Mini PC loaded with Linux mint 18.1, (shout out to cncnoob1979 for the awesome writeup) PREEMPT RT kernel 4.8.11-rt7, Linuxcnc 2.7.8 and an ASUS VT207 touchscreen that just works. Its time to purchase the 7i76e mesa card, and decide on what VFD I'm going to use for the spindle. After a lot of thinking, I am going to go the Clearpath SDSK route unless someone has a good reason not to. They are quiet, compact and fast. I am sure I will have more questions coming up. Thank you all for the help.
