getting started

Hello. This is my first posting to this group. I'm fascinated by CNC
controls and I'm interested in getting started with an inexpensive,
unabmitious project with a high probability of success. I have a
mill, lathe, etc. but converting those to CNC will be a project for
another day.

I want to start out CHEAP and SIMPLE! Like a plywood table with
V-threaded rods and regular old nuts for drives, driving a pen
plotting head in X-Y-Z. There is a local electronics store where a
few months back I bought a do-it-yourself $20 stepper motor driver kit
and a $5 stepper motor of unknown torque specs.

How hard is the electronics? Can I just get a couple more of the
stepper driver kits, a couple more $5 steppers, wire up some relays to
the parallel port, and have the cheap plotting table up and running?
I want to start out with just plotting stuff until I get the hang of
the software involved, the design and machine programming aspects of
it, generating and interpreting G-code, etc. I can worry about
hogging out chips later, much later!

Software-wise I'll be working 100% on linux.

Thank you.

Dave