Phil’s information about his controller can still be found on his website:
The Leadshine drivers posted by Haldor, while nice, are also about 4-6x the cost (cheapest is aliexpress at $64 each) of the drivers that are more than adequate for a “drop-in” Gshield replacement (as posted by LarryM, here).
Add in a 48V power supply ($75) with adequate current (need a 600W supply assuming 4x 2.8A steppers, they need 11.2A potentially, and margin) and when you add up the costs of these components, you’re at $331 which is more than the Xcontroller price excluding shipping. And the Xcontroller has a very limited amount of interconnects (and ideally “fool proof” connectors) to get it going, includes customer service and board replacement for when a problem happens, etc.
Do you get a much more capable controller with the Leadshines and 48V? Yes, but is it on the “cheap” side, which is the point of this post? No.
Even the quoted $225 shipped is not cheap compared to the approx. cost of $80 of Phil’s demon controller considering the level of reuse. That’s about 3x more expensive.