I've heard that QEMU can do this, but my hardware doesn't support an IOMMU to run it.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 15:59, Rance Hall <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Fernando Cassia <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Rance Hall <[email protected]> wrote: >>> This idea has merit, but let me provide another use case. >>> >>> Before I went back to school for my masters I was in industry and we were >>> faced with that ever present, conversion path problem. >>> How do you go from ancient software hardware that might have come to >>> America on the Mayflower, to something that slightly resembles the 20th >>> century. >> >> I have given the idea some more thought.... I think NO major changes >> to the VBox architecture would be needed... just to design a Win32 >> NETWORK PROTOCOL, a "dummy" network protocol for that matter, with a >> bridge and host-side virtual device. >> >> If I´m no mistaken, the Windows networking layer (oversimplified) goes >> like this: >> >> (from lower-layer to top). >> >> NIC DRIVER (ancientdevice.sys) >> NDIS >> PROTOCOL STACK (say TCP) >> WINDOWS SOCKETS >> APPS >> >> By hooking up at the protocol level, wouldn´t it have full access to >> the propietary NIC on the win32 guest, yet, at the same time, would be >> able to forward frames at the layer 2 level, to a dummy NIC on the >> host side... >> >> Does this make sense?. >> > > Im not familiar enough with windows core to know for sure but it > sounds like it makes sense to me anyway. > > In my particular case the offending card was a PCI multi-channel > serial card with an on-board co-processor. The drivers were for OS/2. > > On a WinXP host the device showed up in device mangler as an unknown device. > > A mysterious as-yet-unwritten pci device driver for VBox COULD have > been assigned to the pci device by the host. > > Then much like the USB device windows now, this pci device could be > ASSIGNED to a vm and the vm would get full control of that pci bus > slot no matter if the device was a network adapter or some other > thing-a-ma-bob. > > If such a thing existed I would have been able to virtualize my old > system and ran full speed ahead. But even vmware does not do this. > > VBox already does this for USB and serial devices, I can really see a > market for it for generic bus cards. > > ISA/PCI/PCI-e are all candidates for this kind of approach. > > However, I have a hunch that there is a technical reason why this has > not been done by someone. Its worth dreaming about, but .... > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Colocation vs. Managed Hosting > A question and answer guide to determining the best fit > for your organization - today and in the future. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d > _______________________________________________ > VBox-users-community mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community > -- " ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on we’re all damaged." - Jean-Luc Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie, Star Trek: TNG episode "The Drumhead" - Alex Smith (K4RNT) - Sterling, Virginia USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colocation vs. Managed Hosting A question and answer guide to determining the best fit for your organization - today and in the future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d _______________________________________________ VBox-users-community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community
