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[dlantz-at-armorholdings.com]

Hello all, a newbie to EMC, seeking a few resources.  First an introduction.
By trade, I am a mechnical designer, but I also have functioned as computer
software and hardware support.  I have Linux experience.  I am trying to
build a CNC router to produce small pieces of high quality woodworking and
thin metal works to use as pressing plates for leather.  These would
eventually need to be mass produced (I'm hoping).  I've procured an old
pentium 133, which i've loaded the bdi on, without KDE, then put fvwm on,
and played around with the settings to speed things up.  I bought the 'hobby
cnc' kit for three axis control (the circuit board, 60 in/oz steppers and
misc hardware). My employmer is funding this, because they will probably
want me to retrofit some of the machines out in the shop (waterjet cutter,
plasma cutter, cnc mill, router... and a host of non-cnc machines that could
be modified).
My main questions:
1) where do I find servo motors, at least, less expensive servo motors...
the waterjet cutter here uses 600 oz/in steppers, which i would want to
modify over to servo? (non-emc question)
2) does anyone have good experience with the 'gecko' brand controllers?
3) has anyone successfully built EMC on embedded platforms(pci backplane,
pentium 3 series, or any)?
4) how could spindle speed be controlled if I was using the parallell port?
does anyone have a wiring diagram?

thanks!
David Lantz