Need help

I have an old Shirline cnc mill and lathe. I've tried for a couple years now to install a newer version of linux emc on a Windows computer. Every time I do I can never get any movement out of my stepper motors. I'm having to hook up to the computer with a usb to parallel cord.
What am I missing? Do I need to install some sort of driver?
Please help.

LinuxCNC runs on Linux. You can't run it under Windows. So I am very unclear on what you mean by "linux emc on a Windows computer"

Also, LinuxCNC needs a real parallel port. (or other hardware). It can not run with a USB to parallel converter as these are for printers and basically act like a USB printer sending data to the parallel port. This means that LinuxCNC does not have the pin-level control of the port that it needs.

It is possible that even though the PC does not have a parallel port on the back panel, that there might be one available as a header on the motherboard for an adaptor like this

I just found this video (10-10-2016) on running LINUXCNC on an usb laptop port


"LinuxCNC is running on Ubuntu 16.04 using RT_PREEMPT. Motion hardware consists of an STM32F103 Minimum System Development board"