Looking at purchasing a used Novakon local to me

[Jmhx2]

Personally, at $5k or less it looks like a pretty good deal. I would go into it like Bluehands stated. Buy it for the casting and budget to restore and replace electronics and wear items. (bearings, shocks, etc can be bought on the open market. )The original electronics are amateurish at best. The spindle appears to be a servo of some kind, not sure what was put on those models. Mine has an induction motor, with a spindle you should be able to do rigid tapping.
I've delayed mentioning this, because I'm not 100% that I want to sell, but I have a 2 year old Torus pro that would be turn key.
Torus Pro
Power draw bar
Servos
Industrial electronics
80/20 enclosure
4th axis
UCCNC on miniPC + Touchscreen
Located in Kansas City

[sagreen]

Sorry for going a bit OT, but for those who are thinking about upgrading to Centroid Acorn; Give Pathpilot a try and see what you think. Personally I've had zero problems with Pathpilot and Mach3 was a nightmare. For sure it takes a bit of tinkering to get it going, but the net cost to do it is $85 for a Mesa 7i92h and $20 for a Pathpilot USB stick. There are quite a few threads in the Novakon section here where others have made the switch. Glad to help with the files I used to convert my Torus Pro.

Scott...

[metalmayhem]

Sorry for going a bit OT, but for those who are thinking about upgrading to Centroid Acorn; Give Pathpilot a try and see what you think.
.

pathpilot is pretty nice and it runs smooth , there are a few things I'd like to see with it but overall pathpilot and the mesa cards are bullet proof . If I remember correctly my files were a modified combination of your files and another set of configs I downloaded from here , or something like that . I can't remember what I did but changes were made to make it work for my plain jane stepper torus . I'd guess that it should be close to what is needed for the nm mill and I can always upload the files if anyone needs them

[g29cc]

Did you buy the machine? If so I have almost the identical build (2009), owned it for 14+ years now.