Wow...just installed the new open source Virtual Box on in my Ubuntu linux machine....AMAZING..

I installed Windows 2000 inside Linux. Runs like a CHAMP. The only downfall I see so far is no native access to the PCI bus. In other words, I have a Geovision 16 channel card in this box, and the Windows 2000 could not detect it because it's running as a virtual guest on the linux host so it does not have access to the PCI bus.

The video card drivers are a bit hokie too, but work....

Still pretty amazing for a free VM (virtual machine) software package.

Does being a guest affect access to PCMCIA, USB and serial hardware also?

Also curious how and if you get Rslinx and Rslogix to run on the 2000 guest system.

Looks very good Chako! How about the resources it uses ?

I have installed MS Virtual PC 2007 recently and must say I was very impressed. First time I used virtual machine so no real experience.

Hi Chako,


Nice....


how about the performance and stability? I have a SUSE 10.2 X64 with Vitual Box installed but I still have to install a Windows version onto it. (is still on my todo list)



I have a few questions before I start installing XP or 2000 on it.

Did you need to have a disk formatted in NTFS or is this also being emulated by Virtualbox?

Can you access your serial ports (for programming purposes)?



beegee

They just got the USB part working ok last week sometime. I bet the PCMCIA is in the same boat as PCI bus...and the serial isn't working that great for me...I'd say >no< to serial support using Virtual Box...

Virtual PC is OK. But it doesn't support any USB devices which require special drivers. So no USB comms to PLCs. VMware does allow USB drivers, and I have been online with Modicon Momentum, Siemens Logo and S7-200, and ALL Mitsubishi PLCs through virtual PCs running Windows 2000.

I'm not sure about Virtual Box's policy decisions. It's come up that VMWare made the decision not to support PCMCIA. I heard this secondhand and would love to be proven wrong. I have no idea how tough that would be for them to implement.

It's very stable. No crashes yet in either host or guest.. I've been loading in software and no problems yet.

I was not able to get RS LINX to work, even though the serial port "seems" to be there. So at this point, no go there. I don't have an USB programming cables, so I can't test the usb support. The USB is working.

I insert my flash drive into the box, and Linux picks it up, and Windows picks it up at the same time. What's freaky is when I copy a file from Linux on to my flash drive, it instantlly appears in the Windows guest. I bet the Windows Box if it had a mind, would freak out...speaking of which in that same frame of mind, if the Windows box had a mind, it would be considered a "matrix"....it's well emulated for sure...

I guess why I am impressed is because Virtual Box is free compared to VMware, like everyone likes to use. I like it when free stuff works well.

When I installed Windows 2000, it was like booting a new PC, I booted from a cd-rom, and it installed. When it came time to format the drive during setup, I choose NTFS. I did not "physically" create a partition on my "real" hard drive. All you do is allocated how much space in Virtual Box, I allocated 20 GB. So "virtually" it formated a hard drive of 20 GB, to NTFS, but my orginal hard drive still is ext2 partition.

What I like about MS Virtual PC 2007 is that you can drag&drop / copy&paste files directly from host to guest. Or is that common for a virtual PC ?
On the other hand I guess it is not so impressive for a MS virtual PC in an MS host system against a MS virtual PC in a non-MS host system...

If you like free Virtual machines, you could also check out QEMU. I have been told by a "real freak" that the possibilities and speed of QEMU are better but you would have to be more qualified to get it working....

I just got a new laptop and use VMware for a Win 98 laptop I had that finnaly died. I must say I really like it. I am able to connect to some older equipment whose software will not run on anything newer. I also have RSlogix 500 and RSlogix 5 and both are able to use the Serial port. I have not tried my PCMA slot yet but I can connect to my memory sticks and floppy drives thru USB.

Having 2 machines in one is awesome if not just a bit discerning.

Wonder if I can get a dual serial port machine and just dedicate one port to my virtual machine.