It's probably slop.

... Why does Lenovo's website even have that in the first place? Beyond what the subreddit post leilei mentions being essentially a bunch of clickbait search engine system gaming.

Setting aside the aside the suspiciously clickbaity, possibly AI generated "answers", device passthrough is possible.

First, "PCMCIA" is quite a genericized term. It has been used to refer to PC Card, Cardbus, ExpressCard and probably other things.

Of those, Cardbus and ExpressCard are based on PCI which can be passed through to a guest VM (look up PCI PASSTHROUGH). This requires

a) a machine (CPU and motherboard) that supports hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) AND an IOMMU (Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi )

b) A host OS/hypervisor that allows this. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

Under Linux hosts, AFAIK, Virtualbox, for example can do PCI passthrough of a PCI (or PCI Express) device to a guest OS running in a virtual machine. I believe it uses QEMU KVM under the hood which one can also use with Virt-Manager, which is what I use (at home at least).

Under Windows hosts, it can be done on at least some server variants. On non server Windows variants, AFAIK (this may have changed), it is not possible, regardless of the virtualization application, whether with Virtualbox, VMWare Workstation or whatever else that uses the Microsoft provided Hyper-V hypervisor.

That being said, if OP has a specific use case in mind and can share more concrete details, a more conclusive answer could be given.

darry wrote on 2024-12-18, 13:53:

Setting aside the aside the suspiciously clickbaity, possibly AI generated "answers", device passthrough is possible. […]
Show full quote

Setting aside the aside the suspiciously clickbaity, possibly AI generated "answers", device passthrough is possible.

First, "PCMCIA" is quite a genericized term. It has been used to refer to PC Card, Cardbus, ExpressCard and probably other things.

Of those, Cardbus and ExpressCard are based on PCI which can be passed through to a guest VM (look up PCI PASSTHROUGH). This requires

a) a machine (CPU and motherboard) that supports hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) AND an IOMMU (Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi )

b) A host OS/hypervisor that allows this. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

Under Linux hosts, AFAIK, Virtualbox, for example can do PCI passthrough of a PCI (or PCI Express) device to a guest OS running in a virtual machine. I believe it uses QEMU KVM under the hood which one can also use with Virt-Manager, which is what I use (at home at least).

Under Windows hosts, it can be done on at least some server variants. On non server Windows variants, AFAIK (this may have changed), it is not possible, regardless of the virtualization application, whether with Virtualbox, VMWare Workstation or whatever else that uses the Microsoft provided Hyper-V hypervisor.

That being said, if OP has a specific use case in mind and can share more concrete details, a more conclusive answer could be given.

Thanks for the info.

Some of the Dell Rugged series laptops have option for PCMCIA slot: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/la … f34e&lang=en-us
I have an Adaptec SlimSCSI 1460 PCMCIA SCSI Adapter which only supported up to Windows XP.
Is it possible to passthrough the SCSI adapter to a Windows XP guest OS, so I can access all my legacy SCSI devices?

sangokushi wrote on 2024-12-18, 15:34:

Thanks for the info. […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2024-12-18, 13:53:

Setting aside the aside the suspiciously clickbaity, possibly AI generated "answers", device passthrough is possible. […]
Show full quote

Setting aside the aside the suspiciously clickbaity, possibly AI generated "answers", device passthrough is possible.

First, "PCMCIA" is quite a genericized term. It has been used to refer to PC Card, Cardbus, ExpressCard and probably other things.

Of those, Cardbus and ExpressCard are based on PCI which can be passed through to a guest VM (look up PCI PASSTHROUGH). This requires

a) a machine (CPU and motherboard) that supports hardware assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) AND an IOMMU (Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi )

b) A host OS/hypervisor that allows this. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

Under Linux hosts, AFAIK, Virtualbox, for example can do PCI passthrough of a PCI (or PCI Express) device to a guest OS running in a virtual machine. I believe it uses QEMU KVM under the hood which one can also use with Virt-Manager, which is what I use (at home at least).

Under Windows hosts, it can be done on at least some server variants. On non server Windows variants, AFAIK (this may have changed), it is not possible, regardless of the virtualization application, whether with Virtualbox, VMWare Workstation or whatever else that uses the Microsoft provided Hyper-V hypervisor.

That being said, if OP has a specific use case in mind and can share more concrete details, a more conclusive answer could be given.

Thanks for the info.

Some of the Dell Rugged series laptops have option for PCMCIA slot: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/la … f34e&lang=en-us
I have an Adaptec SlimSCSI 1460 PCMCIA SCSI Adapter which only supported up to Windows XP.
Is it possible to passthrough the SCSI adapter to a Windows XP guest OS, so I can access all my legacy SCSI devices?

That card is ancient and pre-PCI (before Cardbus) [1] assuming I am quoting the right manual.

That Dell machine has an ExpressCard slot, those are not physically or logically compatible nor easily (if at all) adaptable to the Adaptec 1460

A laptop is really not ideal for this use case, IMHO, unless you can find an ExpressCard SCSI adapter or a Cardbus SCSI adapter to use with a converter to Cardbus into ExpressCard (essentially a PCI to PCI Express bridge, AFAIU). This can get expensive.

Using a modern desktop or tower with a PCI Express slot and a legacy PCI SCSI adapter (like an Adaptec 2930 or 2940 variant) through a PCI Express to PCI bridge like this one [2] (just an example) would be easier and cheaper, IMHO.

[1]
System Requirements
Portable PC with a PC Card Type II, Type III, or Toshiba
Type IV slot

[2]
https://www.startech.com/en-ca/cards-adapters/pex1pci1