Bridgeport conversion

Hi,

I have a bridgeport Interact series 1 CNC mill, with steppers, that I
want to convert form its ancient "boss 5" cnc control, to something newer.

The question is, should I keep the old stepper drives, or fit geckos?
The drives on the older bridgeports take "phase" rather than step and
direction input, which thankfully EMC is quite capable of providing
... so no problems there. The only issue is are Geckos up to the job
(thes motors draw 7.5 amps, thats 3.75A per winding as they are always
driven "two-coil" fullstep with a bipolar drive.

Should I stick with the old drives or will geckos give me a
performance increase?? The old drives certainly powered the steppers
before, but with their "saturable inductors" .. I wonder how much
improvement I'll see with a modern drive? The motors are 8 lead, so it
should be possible to wire them up to work nicely on a gecko ...

This must have been doen before .. whats the score??