[Qemu-devel] serial.c changes to make smartcard reader work on win2003 emulated on linux

[Juergen Pfennig]

Hi,
now my qemu evaluation is done, I had a deep look into the code and I can now 
write my
documentation. What I wanted to find out was:

(1) Can qemu be used with the latest MS OS (e.g. Win2003) to run legacy
      software under Linux?

      Answer: yes it works fine and stable. Win2003 activation and online 
updates work
                   but MS does not support the es1370 sound driver any longer 
(SP1 issue).

(2) Is it fast enough and is it easy to use?

     Answer: for Win2003 you need a CPU like 2.4 GHz P4 or AMD 3000+ with a 
large
                  cache (Celerons or Durons wan't work well). Surprisingly 
Win2003 can
                  live with very few (virtual) memory like 256 MByte, so a host 
with 512 MByte
                  is fine.
                  qemu is easy to use, and my documentation will contain a 
script to make
                  it even easier.
                  The effective speed of a 2.4 GHz P4 (using kqemu) is like a 
667 MHz PII,
                  which is good enough for old software. Remember that you will 
normally
                  not boot rather than (re-)activate a saved vm state which 
takes only one
                  or two seconds.

Unfortunately qemu still contains some bugs and shortcommings. To make a simple
smart card reader work (the German Banks gave devices like Towitoku micro 120 
away
for free or a very low price) you need an updated version of qemu. Other 
problems are
that network and keyboard state are not correctly restored when reactivating a 
saved
vm state.

HELLO QEMU MAINTAINERS
=======================

My patches modify serial.c, vl.c and vl.h . At the time of this writing there 
are still many
things in serial.c that should be improved. As qemu's tendency to accept 
patches is
not clear yet, you should make some statement of how to continue. Do you want to
see any further improvements of the code? If so I will invest a little more 
time into
the patches and mail them to the list. If not I will still mail a minimum patch 
to list and
will eventually create some more specialized patches (x86 PC on x86 Linux only) 
to
come with my documentation.

Yours Jürgen