Upgrade from old version to V2.8.4

I built my machine in 2015 and all was working fine on my old AMD Athlon PC machine until a couple of days ago. The HDD died on me and me, being a dumbass didn't have an image saved. I did have a backup of the config files however. I downloaded and installed the latest version, but the stepconf files were reported to be incompatable with the latest version. 

I went through the stepconf wizard. Problem is my latency test came back with a reading of around 940000! Max setting on the stepconf wizard was 50000. Anyway, the machine jogs fine, but the steppers sure make some wierd noises, I'm assuming loosing steps also.
Driver is a Gecko 540.
Any thoughts? Should I be downgrading my version of LinuxCNC. I can't for the life of me remember the version number I installed back then. I've got spare PCs, but none with a parallel port.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

On the Downloads page, there are instructions to install the RTAI kernel and RTAI version of LinuxCNC, should improve latency a lot.

Thank you for that. Silly me, I thought the LinuxCNC installer came with an RT Kernel built in by default. I'll give it a go and report back.

It does come with RT kernel, but those are not the same thing:
RTAI used on older computers, was in use for quite some time
RT-Preempt new-ish used on new computers

Bluerobotz wrote:

I did have a backup of the config files however. I downloaded and installed the latest version, but the stepconf files were reported to be incompatable with the latest version. 

You should have been able to ignore the stepconf files, and an updater script would have converted the config files (HAL and INI) to the new 2.8 format. 
Basically, you should have been able to copy your linuxcnc folder from the old PC to the new one. 

Thank you Andy. I just went through the Stepconf wizard again. Only took 5 minutes. Thanks, once again.

Thank you Tommy. Installed the RTAI Kernel, but with marginal improvement. latency went down from 940000 to just under 700000. I slowed down the max speed and latency in the Stepconf wizard, and the machine seems to run OK on these settings. Time for a new PC I think. I have another old machine which is giving sub 30000 latency, just need a compatible parallel port card for it.

Once again thank you for your feedback.

Yeah, if RTAI has bad latency, usually means something is horribly wrong on the hardware side of the PC, granted all power saving options are disabled in BIOS.
And i do not mean something broken, had a new PC with very bad latency, so might be BIOS/UEFI, processor scheduling, multi processing, C states, etc that are not done properly.

Yes, PC all good on all counts,so bit of a wierd one. Al sorted for now though, so thank you all for your support.