Converting working plasma to plasmac rebuild.....rewire to mesa?

Thanks for the help in advance. The work the community has put into linuxcnc has allowed me to start a business i wouldn't have been able to, thanks from the bottom of my heart. I look forward to the day this is my full time job and I have time to contribute to the community which has helped me so much.

I have a 5x10 plasma powered by a hypertherm 45xp that uses linuxcnc 2.8 pre "dual gantry" running on weezy using gmocappy for front end. Electronics is two parallel ports one running a gekko g540 with the x1x2yz homing/estop and the second a parallel port "breakout board" to handle the "floating head", touchoff, arc ok, torch firing and ohmic touchoff (which is wired but not working). It has been working pretty well for a few years now. ~100 8x4ft sheets cut mostly 14-16ga stuff. I've gotten really good at editing gcode on the fly when things mess up..........that being said the lack of THC and ohmic touch off is starting to get annoying and plasmac looks slick....... so it's time to upgrade.

Seems like i have a few options -
1. Keep existing electronics, add thc (thinking mesa thcad) for thc (and maybe ohmic?). Seems like most people arnt a fan of this option as we are really pushing what a parallel port can do. (computer has less than 10k latency with wheezy rtai.....havnt checked how that would change with the prempt version)
2. Move to mesa! Let me start off by saying I am a mesa noob, setup 4-5 parallel port machines at this point. This seems like a good opportunity to venture to the "dark side" :-p I just have a few questions

1. is their an easy way to hookup a g540 to a mesa card or will i need to hard wire it by hand? it is as simple as a 7i96 -> lpt-26 to parallel port ribbon cable -> g540 and program accordingly? Foresee any issues with this?
2. I've looked at the THC documentation and it seems strait forward, thcad 10 vs 5 does it make a difference? Would you recommend thcad for ohmic?
3. Mesa ethernet or pcie? Any real advantage either way? Ethernet is cheaper but seems a bit harder to setup. Sounds like wiring 7i96 to a switch is a no go and getting internet over Ethernet is a pain. Is this still accurate? (post was from 2018). Not a big deal just curious if i could hook up the mesa card to the network and control it from the heated office when things were running smooth.

Thanks,
Jimmy

I am a fan of "use whatever works for you"

If you are comfortable with the hardware you have at the moment then download the live buster ISO and see what the latency is on your existing machine before installing anything. Then make a decision based on that.

Having said that I am not sure if there is any reason PlasmaC won't run on Wheezy although I must admit that I have not tried it.

linuxcnc.org/downloads/

EDIT: I just ran the latest PlasmaC version (0.182) on Wheezy in sim mode with both Axis and Gmoccapy without any issues.

Thanks everyone for the advice.

I went ahead and bought a 7I96 and 2 thcad-5 for ohmic and thc. I tried the prempt version and it wasnt good. I dont remember the exact numbers but it was 100k ish. I've got a stack of old desktops without parallel ports and will dedicate one for the mesa setup. This machine (old amd pc from 2000....still running somehow) will be moved to another project......thinking a cnc grinding machine to cleanup the slag/grime from plasma cutting.....either way a project for another day.

I will try plasmac on wheezy with the thc wired up just to see if it works while I rewire the new electronics ...... that way I could keep the current system up while I learn/troubleshoot the mesa one.....the old setup needs rewired anyways as it was "prototyped" and never made it to an enclosure.....embarrassing but it worked.

Unfortunately the Mesa ethernet cards require prempt_rt. if you can't get it going, a different PC is in order. But without a bas thread, latency requirements are much relaxed. report your latency and we can take t from there.