The ultimate shop PC sytem

I recently wanted to test Mach1 but I don't have windows xp on any of
my business PC's because of program compatibility issues. I was going to
set up a separate PC for my shop replacing the dell 133 Mhz pc which
would not run Master5. Currently, I use DeskwinNC for most of my full
size milling machine jobs although I also have Maxnc, Desknc and cncpro
that I use for customer support.
My son mentioned to me when he was picking up our grand children that he
appreciated us watching the kids and he'd be interested in helping me
put together a new pc system for my shop. Since he is an application
developer for the guys that brought us the blue screen of death, I
figured that wow what an oportunity to finally put together a new shop
PC with multiple operating systems. I told him what I wanted and he was
delighted to have the oportunity to do something different.
First I bought a P3 1G 40 Meg HD, floppy, mouse, CDROM with keyboard
from
http://www.softwareandstuff.com/h_dsk_630tcfcel1.html for $299
My son then set up the multiple operating systems using partion magic 8
and boot magic to set up a partion for XP, Windows 98SE, Linux ( using
the BDI) and Dos.
He also added several shared partions for shared and Fat32 file
partions.

It works slick. When I turn on the PC, boot magic has me press shift
F10. Then a menu pops up to select one of the operating systems. Arrow
down to the one I want and it then loads. The reason that I selected
this PC was because I knew it would work with Master5 in windows 98SE
with out the timing module problem. I loaded master5 and it ran great,
Next rebooted the pc in XP and loaded Mach1. Wow! What a awesome
program. I did some preliminary setup with it and had the display moving
without a stepper system connected. It looks great. Last I rebooted the
machine but with a linux boot disk in the floppy. My son will eliminate
this problem as it seems that lilo.cnfg needs to be edited for use with
boot magic. In any case using the BDI that Paul Corner send me (thanks
Paul) I loaded EMC Wow! That also has come a long way in the two years
since I last played with EMC. It also seems to run fine.

So now I just have to transfer the other programs and G code files and
move it out to the shop. Considering that I started my business over 10
years ago with a 286-12 PC and Dancam I can say that CNC has really come
a long way. But with this new pc and multiple operating systems I will
be able to run just about any cnc program available.
Dan