Help Controller for a Lathe ?

Hello, I have a—Belgian?—Gallic 16 NC lathe. When I acquired it, I removed the control system but left the spindle power unit in place. For the control system, I use Mach3 via two parallel ports, UHU drives, and DC servos. I can also turn in a quasi-conventional manner using two electronic handwheels. The whole setup worked well for years, but it is admittedly outdated. Now I have a fault in the original main power circuit. Although I have an old wiring diagram, the actual wiring is a chaotic mess. I am now considering overhauling the main power circuit to make it organized and installing a more modern control system. However, I need to be able to use the two electronic handwheels, as there are no mechanical ones. Does anyone have experience with a control system that is affordable (the machine is 35 years old and could fail completely at any time), supports two electronic handwheels, and doesn't come with a 1,000-page manual?
In my stock is a Mesa 7I96 Eth, can I use it?
Many thanks for any replies,
Hans

Yes you most probably can, as it is controlled by two parallel ports, see what port is wired to drives and remove it, wire drives to Mesa, then get an IDC26 to DB25 adapter cable and use that to wire the second port to Mesa, granted the encoders and maybe inputs are on it.

This is actually pretty easy, the 7i76e comes with 2 mpg inputs and you can have them on the 7i96 as well but you have to give up a couple of pins or a Stepgen.I can't quite remember what. If you ask PCW nicely, I'm sure he will sort out the correct solution.

Once you have that sorted, there is a good example of a MPG using parallel port pins in the docs.  linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/examples/mpg.html

But in your case, you can ditch the axis select knob because you will use a dedicated MPG for each axis. Just implement the scale select knob... I have not thought about it but you may be able to use the one scale select for both MPGs. Using digital knobs lets you minimize the number of pins you need for the scale hence the mux4 components.

Many thanks for every answer. Who is PCW?
Hans

PCW = owner of Mesa, Peter Wallace and a very active forum member

Keep us updated what you do there

Keep in mind that the hand wheel can most probably just be connected to "normal inputs" if you want to use dedicated encoder inputs for the spindle or other things, like scales.