Denford Software & Machines

Greetings all. I'm new to the board and need some assistance.
I recently purchased a microturn lathe and as usual there was no computer or software that came with it.
I have Mach3 and a driver board that I use for my mill.

I read through the forum and it seems I have a choice to bypass the original driver board.
Remove the top board and use the step and direction pins on the 96 pin connector.
I would use Mach3 and my driver board.

A second option I am thinking about would be to disconnect the 8 wires from the steppers and connect them to my board. The motors would still be powered by the original transformer.

Are those about the only options I have?

I would love to use the original software or the latest software that is available for this machine. I would be willing to purchase a license if its priced reasonably.

I have an update on my lack of progress.
I went with option 2, wire my board straight to the stepper motors at the lathe and see if that would work.
It didn't.
I removed the wires from the orange connectors and connected them to the board I use to run my mill. My mill runs fine on Mach3. I can run programs and jog the axis fine.
I hooked the x and z wires to the x and z steppers and fired up Mach3.
I used Mach3 mill only because all the port and pins are setup already. I was just planning on jogging the x and z to see if they would respond.
They didn't.
The lathe was power on. The door was closed. The red Power light was lit. The spindle was able to be turned on and off.
The motors would not jog though.
The motors seemed to be locked up. They were buzzing a bit.
Is there something else I needed to do?

Final update. I mangage to get it running by removing the driver board and jumping the pins on the 96 pin connector.
Too easy.
I've ordered a breakout board and some single pin connectors from ebay. Total cost was about $12.
I'm using Mach3 and everything seems to be going well.

Thanks for the update...connecting step+direction to the 96 way is a pretty easy way to get Mach to run one of our machines...the issue will be when/if you want to control the spindle speed from Mach, you will have to have an isolated analogue on the Breakout board.