to CNC a Bridgeport?

Hi,

It looks like I just purchased a Bridgeport Series 1 mill in good
refurbished condition, so of course I wish to CNC it straightaway. It
seems that homebrew CNC has come a long way since I last looked...

So far as I can see all I need is:

1/ Some beefy stepper motors.

Display Electronics in the UK used to have some nice
surplus 180oz/inch units, but these are now
all gone... Anyone know of some other good sources?.

2/ Electronics to interface the PC parallel port to drive 3 or 4
steppers, using a 2 bit
step & direction protocol.

I've made stepper motor driver boards before using PIC
microcontrollers, so this is not
a problem, but are there some cheap off the shelf
solutions for this?

3/ Some software such as the NIST EMC freeware program.

Is this the defacto standard software to use?

This looks just to easy...?? Regards, Peter Moreton