So I Acquired a 64-Bit PC to Run Newest Version of LinuxCNC

A gal from church was clearing out her fleet of PCs too primitive to run Windows 11 and I told her that I needed something that was 64-bit that could run Linux. It has 32GB of RAM, and several TB of both hard disks and SSD--far in excess of what LinuxCNC needs.

It had no built-in parallel port. LinuxCNC needs a real Centronics parallel port for timing reasons. I bought a PCIe parallel port made by StarTech. LinuxCNC would not control the mill! Searching for guidance gave me only a sensation that the parallel port might have the wrong address. Supergrok saved the day. It helped me find that the built-in parallel poets are at 0x3F8. This rang a bell from when I wrote a terminate-and-stay-resident PC-DOS (stop laughing) program that intercepted data going to the parallel port and converted Epson control codes to Postscript. It was wonderfully elegant in how it allowed programs with no Postscript support to use Apple LaserWriters 

Changing one of the LinuxCNC setup files to talk to the parallel printer at 0xC010 and problem is solved.

Complicating this was that F2 (enter BIOS) and F12 (boot from somewhere besides hard disk did nothing. It turned out that unless your monitor was hooked up to a DisplayPort monitor, they did nothing except assume you wanted to reinstall Windows. So I v dug an HDMI to DisplayPort csble.