What do you mean by window / fullscreen? There can't be any window if you pass thru the graphics card - you need to switch the screen to the other graphics card. I haven't used sdl but would go with VNC for installing the Windows VM. Later you only need it occasionally after Windows software updates or crashes that require user interaction while booting. Install a vncviewer and enter xm vncviewer <name-of-guest> as root (or the equivalent in xl slang).
When using SDL, I have a window that is black on the Dom0 Monitor, and I have to click in it in order for the Mouse to change focus to the VM in the other Monitor. I didn't tested with VNCViewer.
My idea is that I should be able to change focus from Dom0 to the WXP VM by using something like Ctrl + Alt + F2, seems more practical. As if each VM was its own console.
Why would Microsoft produce paravirtualized drivers for Xen? It's not that they were to gain from it. We are lucky that we have the GPLPV drivers for disks and networking that have been developed in the open source community.
It doesn't have to be Microsoft. But I'm surprised that getting audio support from a HVM seems to be hard without even more Hardware, I through everything was emulable or paravirtualizable but GPU.
That's no loss. The best is to stay clear of UEFI, as it means trouble. I'm not even sure if UEFI boot has been implemented in Xen, and if, which release.
From 4.2 onwards you can build Xen into a .efi file that could be readed directly by the UEFI firmware. Actually, I manage to make such a file, but it always hangs while booting and didn't receive any sort of help to be able to debug it with my near-null Linux and Xen skills.
I was unaware of Supermicro going into the enthusiast m/b market. If so, why didn't you get the C7Z87-OCE? (I'm sure you had a reason, just curious.)
Four reasons:
1- Price difference was relatively small between an "Enthusiast Motherboard" and a true, serious "Workstation Motherboard". I ain't your typical overclocking gamer.
2- C7Z87-OCE could use a Chipset either Stepping C1 or C2, X10SAT was always C2. You had no easy way to figure out the Stepping before purchasing, so I prefer to go the safest route, just for the sake of having a C2 with the USB 3.0 Sleep bug fixed more than any actual need.
3- During the last 8 years, I was able to undervolt and underclock with no issues on AMD platforms using Software based tools (Including Motherboards with OEM-like BIOS, Notebooks, etc). I was expecting that I would have been able to do the same with Haswell, so I could bypass any BIOS limitation to tweak it to my actual performance/power consumption needs.
4- Q87 and C226 are supposed to have VT-d support on Chipset too. So far, I have absolutely no official data on what it is used for, but as far that I know, VT-d specifications allows you to have more than one "DMA Remapping Engine" (Haswell itself has two: One for the integrated GPU, other for "everything else") and chances are that the other Chipsets got it disabled. I suppose it should make easy to use IOMMU with devices attached to the Chipset and its own PCIe Slots.
After all, the only thing what I know that you NEED a Z87 Chipset for is to raise the Multiplier beyond max turbo, which with a non-K series Processor is a wasted feature anyways. I don't see any limitation on C226 itself besides that, just that it falls on the Motherboard manufacturer will to allow you to run things out-of-spec or not.
Are you using Synergy for mouse? Or the settings in the guest config file? To be honest, I never tried the guest configs with regard to the mouse, and I wasn't aware there was a keyboard emulation. Actually, I'm perplexed on how this would work.
My guest file looks rather dull. Here is how it is:
name = "wxpmain"
builder = 'hvm'
memory = 3584
boot = "c"
vcpus = 4
vif = ['bridge=xenbr0']
pci = ['01:00.0','01:00.1']
xen_platform_pci = 1
device_model_version = "qemu-xen-traditional"
serial = 'pty'
viridian = 1
pae = 1
acpi = 1
apic = 1
disk = ['file:wxp_sp3.img,hda,w','file:gamesvhd.img,hdb,w']
# nographic = 1
# soundhw = 'hda'
opengl = 1
sdl = 1
vnc = 0
vnclisten = ""
vncpasswd = ""
stdvga = 0
gfx_passthru = 0
Mouse and Keyboard seems to be emulated. I don't find any need to do USB passthrough. The only thing I notice is that non-standard buttons (The one in the Keyboard to open the calculator, for example) don't work on the WXP VM, but I can live without that. I didn't noticed any lag or latency.
Unfortunately there is usually no way to use the graphics card audio other than via the HDMI interface. I haven't yet seen graphics cards that have separate audio outputs, which is kind of a shame.
I'm aware about audio via HDMI, however, I don't have any Monitor to use it with. The problem is that even through the HDMI controller seems to be correctly installed on the WXP VM, on Sound and Audio Devices it appears as if it doesn't have any Sound Card device installed. I suppose that I need to enable emulation to have at least one Sound Card for the HDMI controller to actually work if I had a Monitor with speakers. Doesn't seems to be totally standalone.
What I did hear is that you could set a Pulseaudio Server, or something like that, and reroute via the virtual network the sound from the Windows VM to Dom0. However, it seems to be hard to do, and also supposedly it has a great latency penalty.
controlled by Linux (my media streamer is running on Linux). You could connect a microphone to it's mic input, though. This setup requires you to pass through a USB controller/port. Good luck with audio!
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