Is the Expresscard/34 supported on MacBooks Pros

[P15D24]

Is the Expresscard/34 supported on MacBooks Pros?

[Pat_Lee]

Is the Expresscard/34 supported on MacBooks Pros?

No, we don't virtualize the Expresscard in a VM.

If you are using it for networking, using NAT networking in the guest should pass the networking through to the VM.

What peripheral are you trying to use?

Pat

[P15D24]

DB9 serial port. The serial Expresscard is only available with Windows drivers. It for Icom radio cloning software and we have tried USB/serial (Keyspan) adapter and it didn't work. It didn't work on my Thinkpad or Dell laptops either with the USB device. However a serial PC card adapter worked fine on both the Thinkpad and Dell. Thought I would give a Expresscard a try if possible.

[Obeechi]

Not supported in a VM?.. this is terrible news... I was planning on using the expresscard/34 to have an eSATA drive with 1TB connected to my MacBook Pro... and this TB drive would have two Firewire 800's, which my first generation 15 inch MacBook Pro lacks...

So I guess this means I could not consider accessing boot camp on a partition on the eSATA drive via a VM... and that I couldn't save data to the eSATA while running in a VM...

Are these dilemas both true?

[admin]

Pat means the VM won't see the Expresscard slot itself -- it may well be able to see the devices attached via your Expresscard, if they appear to OS X as a device we can use.

For example, if you use the Expresscard->eSATA adapter to connect a hard drive to the computer, you can still store virtual machines on that hard drive and run them. The virtual machines won't know they're on an Expresscard interface, but they won't need to.

[admin]

(Think of it like running some old OS like DOS 5.0 that never heard of SATA, using a virtual IDE disk, and the physical drive that backs the virtual IDE disk is actually SATA -- or SCSI -- or eSATA connected via Expresscard -- the VM doesn't have to know. That's part of the magic of virtualization!)

[Obeechi]

So VMWare is really Disneyland with a Yellow Brick Road. Instead of clicking heels, we click mice. That's Fusion.