[vbox-dev] Access to specific isa card with VBox???

[François Revol]

Hi,

Le 9 nov. 2010 à 09:46, Djamel Hakkar a écrit :

> Hello,
> 
> We have a software that runs on MS-DOS and must communicate with a specific card installed on port isa.
> We  want to use this software in VBox with a machine that runs XP.
> Is it possible to access to the ISA port with VBox in this case?

As far as I know the only passthrough implemented in VBox is for disk drives.

> Do we have to do a specific development?
> Can you help us in this development, how much would it cost?

As I said on the QEMU list, it's not far from a PCI passthrough except the device isn't exposed itself on the bus.

There doesn't seem to be much discussion even on PCI passthrough on the mailing list:
http://search.gmane.org/?query=pci+passthrough&group=gmane.comp.emulators.virtualbox.devel

If you are interested in doing it, it might be nice to joint development with QEMU at least on the driver side of things.

I'm sure Bochs had PCI passthrough at some point.

Some pointers:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pci-passthrough/
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html-single/Virtualization/index.html#chap-Virtualization-PCI_passthrough
http://www.valinux.co.jp/documents/tech/presentlib/2010/Xen%20Summit%20North%20America%202010/status-update-qemu-pcie.pdf

François.