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Any VM Software That Supports Hardware Mapping?

M

MoMeanMugs

Golden Member
I seem to be coming up short looking to see if what I want exists. I have an old MyHD 100 that doesn't support 64-bit. I use Vista 64-bit as my desktop OS, but I'd like to run a VM that I can use the TV tuner in. I don't watch TV at all, so this is more of an experiment. If it can't be done, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I just don't like to see hardware sitting around. 🙂
 
AFAIK the only virtualization software that support giving a guest direct access to hardware is Xen but I've never used it.
 
What you want is not possible in any virtual machine software that I've used or heard of. Xen probably would, but that only runs with a linux "host" (Xen doesn't really have a host). If your processor has VT extensions, you could run Xen with linux as the Dom0 (host) and Vista as a DomU (guest).
 
In THEORY it is possible, but it usually isn't provided as a VM capability at least very reliably / well.

You're better off looking for unofficial driver installer hacks for your existing card, or finding 3rd party drivers, or figuring out how to use the OEM drivers anyway even if they're not officially supported, or see if you can just get Windows to use it without OEM drivers or something....

On the other hand, a few of the relatively somewhat newer Core2 and Core Quad CPUs from Intel support something called IOMMU / TXT feature which is basically a hardware enhancement in the CPU that lets the I/O devices be transparently virtualized since without that feature DMA I/O isn't really virtualized fully so it isn't really always possible to efficiently assign a hardware device to the control of a VM guest.

So maybe if you had an IOMMU / TXT capable processor model and you waited a few more months maybe one of the main VM suppliers will have some software to let you virtualize the card.

I'd LOVE it if/when they did that, since I'd run UNIX HOST full time, then just run a VM guest of XP/Vista to play video games and give the full control of the GPU card to the VM guest under those circumstances.

 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
AFAIK the only virtualization software that support giving a guest direct access to hardware is Xen but I've never used it.
Click to expand...

But you need paravirtualized drivers for each of those devices, not likely for his hw. So yep in theory, but not something he could use in this case.
 
Originally posted by: QuixoticOne

I'd LOVE it if/when they did that, since I'd run UNIX HOST full time, then just run a VM guest of XP/Vista to play video games and give the full control of the GPU card to the VM guest under those circumstances.
Click to expand...

I was hoping to be able to do just that. I might play with it later just to see how deep in shit I can step. 🙂
 
But you need paravirtualized drivers for each of those devices, not likely for his hw. So yep in theory, but not something he could use in this case.
Click to expand...

All of the talk I saw about it with regard to Xen used the normal Linux drivers in the domU so I'm not so sure about that, but I still don't have any first hand experience to talk from.
 
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