DRO questions / also Mac's and motion control

3 part'er:

1. Does anyone here have any experience with the SimpleStep
interface boards?

http://www.simplestep.com/simplestep2000/motion_controlp1.html

They're based on serial communication protocols and a stand
alone interpreter/driver.

Also I'm very interested in the quadrature encoder board if
anyone has used this. I'm thinking of using with the U.S. Digital
HEDS encoder and linear encoder strips.

http://www.usdigital.com/products/heds/
http://www.usdigital.com/products/disklinear/

I realize most things get done around here by "bit wiggling" on
a PC parallel port but for those of us who have Mac's stacked
like cordwood, a serial approach is "of interest".

2. Does anyone out there do "anything" in terms of motion or
machine control with Mac's (that should bring deafening silence!!!).
I have a number of Mac's available to me and would especially like
to create a DRO from one using the SimpleStep quadrature encoder
board and a linear strip. Mac's have no parallel port so the approach
would almost always be send serial commands to a controller which
handles the "heavy-lifting".

3. For anyone who does work with Mac's, what about CAM software.
I use VectorWorks for CAD and like it.

Thanks,

Ken
kjenkins@...