@ataraxis yes, you are right, thanks for the correction, apologies for any confusion.
I have the drivers working on my Ultimaker Original as of a week ago with full SPI control and no external boards, super smooth. Managed to blow three of them along the way. Now have protector boards on them.
Odd thing is that for the X, Y and E0, I had to half the number of steps per unit as compared to the original drivers, but for Z, it remained the same.