Hi Shonky, and how much money do you reckon your boss will end paying you in wages/salary to write this bit of software?
And what will the opportunity cost of lost time and other productivity sapping hassles your expensive engineers and tech support people will end up frittering away while they juggle cables to save a measley $1K?

If you're writing the software "out of band" i.e. out of hours, then your boss is a smart man - getting his workers to do it for him for free.

If you're being paid to write it during working hours, spend 30 minutes and put up a business case to your boss of how much it would *really* cost [and don't underestimate] them to pay you to do it, and factor in the others (and your) time involved to keep the current system going.

If your boss is a good manager he will see the light and let you buy the other software.

But make sure the other software will work as its supposed to - but given its pedigree I doubt it won't work.