Stepper motor controllers, general use?

[cdev]

I want to learn a bit about motor control ad want to buyseveral motor controllers for general use to use with my raspberry pi or perhaps other stuff and I want to get some inexpensive motor control board. My first project I think will be some kind of antenna rotator or az-el mount..  Bluntly,  I am a rank beginner.  Hoping to just learn the basics of moving stuff with motors. Very simple control of motion.

Another project I'd like to tackle eventually is motorizing my ( drilling) x-y table for drilling holes in PCBs in a neater manner.

I am on a tight budget though.

So I want to buy at least two motor control boards on ebay that I can use to move stuff. And perhaps standardize on. I have no idea which one(s) to buy. I have a couple of four wired steppers that I have removed from old hardware, and a couple of other old unused devices that contain steppers I'd like to fool around with, a printer and fax machine..

but the control board(s) that I get first I hope will be ones that I can use to interface to a wide variety of small motors as a learning platform, not spending much on them at all.

Where would you start to do this?

[thm_w]

Get some A4988 modules, they are super cheap.
https://whatibroke.com/2019/08/10/a4988-stepper-motor-raspberrypi/

You can directly hook them up to the pi, but, I think just buying a 3D printer type board and running GRBL on it would be easier.
Example, don't know if its any good: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003511625068.html

[nctnico]

Be sure to get a positional encoder as well. Stepper motors may miss steps under varying load.

[rpiloverbd]

If you want to control DC motors, I suggest L293D dual DC motor driver. This is the simplest type of motor controller that I've ever come across. https://www.etechnophiles.com/l293d-motor-driver-module-ic-datasheet-pinouts/
There is another L293D based motor shield. This one can control DC, stepper and servo: https://kuongshun.com/products/l293d-motor-driver-board
You can also control DC  motors using Labview. Here is a tutorial if you are interested: https://www.theengineeringprojects.com/2020/12/dc-motor-control-using-myrio.html