Pete:
Well, I think there won't really be any other choice coming from Next Wave. I was doing a little research yesterday, and it looks like the microcontroller chip on the older boards hasn't been made since...2004. Yup, the spec from Freescale Semiconductor show it's been out of production since then. Note that it uses the same processor architecture (68000/68HC11) that was in the original Macintosh computers. Yes, the FIRST ones....So, if NWA can't get boards, it's likely because their supplier can't get chips, because all of the ones that exist are already soldered into boards, or dead.
.
However, realize this opens additional possibilities. There are quite a few other CNC controllers out there now, some good, some bad, some really cool, and new ones being invented daily. While the "easiest" thing might be to just go with the NWA box, the forums seem to show some lingering software problems with that one. I suspect it's not any real "quality issue", but rather the normal cycle of there still being kinks worked out. I'm sure the original controllers had a similarly long period of some annoying thing not working right...like the fabled "bad usb cable" issue they recited for years. And at least with the NWA boxes, you won't be left on your own to debug the Open Source LinuxCNC or RepRap code. And yet, there are FAR more people working on the code of those two, than NWA's controller-board vendor could ever hire. Which means that the GCode support of those systems is significantly better. Whether that matters, of course, depends on whether you need those things, of course.
For example, the ncPod controllers lost support in Mach back in version 3, with still no support in Mach 4. Whereas many others are actively supported. The ncPod guy claims he's designed "hundreds" of CNC boards since then, but the Internet would apparently disagree, with nothing new since about 2004 from him or anyone using the term ncPod.
Bottom line is, like with most things, how much is it worth to have a place to just send the box to when it dies, versus the effort and learning of a new system and not being tied to what amounts to a proprietary system? Personally, and granted I'm not normal
, I'd take the opportunity to ditch the ncPod-based controllers from NWA and move to a standards-based, open-source platform. Technologically speaking, ncPod is a dead-end product.
Regards
Thom