Hello,
I have a TCL 240 that I have been refitting to run with Turbo CNC.
Mine ran from a BBC Master computer, not PC compatable. The control was via the BBC's 1MHz Tube Bus I think. The Control card in the Lathe had a Z80 processor and some other logic. I think the Host computer issued movement and control functions to this card and the card cordinated the movements.
I have made a interface board to link between 2x PC Printer ports for control. There are a couple of tasks I have not finished yet, Spindle control and Spindle index.
The Spindle Speed I was planing to do with a PIC or Atmel microprocessor. The Spindle index just needs testing at the moment.
I have friends that are using Mach3, and may end up modifing the system to run on Mach3 with a revised control pannel, insted of the Boxford design.
Currently I am using the original motor drivers. The only tricky part is the Tool index control if you have that option. It had relays on the bottom of the driver card that switched it to run from either the X or Z step & Direction signals. I bypassed this so the signals were driven direct from the interface card as another axis. There is
VB code on the Mach3 web site that can manage the tool change as Y axis.
Regards Peter