Snow Leopard Server in a VM.

Looking for answers specific to running SL Server in a virtual machine such as VirtualBox, Parallels, etc. I'd rather just use the client version, but that's not allowed.
I have a few apps that are PPC only. Two are Monaco Profiler and ProfileMaker 5. Both of which are going to be replaced very soon with the new i1Profiler. I have a free upgrade to that coming whenever it gets released. But the new software, for now anyway, will not support profiling scanners. So I'm going to have to use one of these older titles to do that profiling. X-Rite has said that if they get enough requests (griping), they'll offer a scanner profiling module for i1Profiler as an extra free. Fine and dandy, but there's no guarantee they'll ever do it.
Much more important if I want to move to Lion. Then scanner software I use has never been updated to a Universal app. The FireWire driver is 32 bit Intel, and there's a sub application that controls the sharpening parameters between the scanner and the main app that's Intel (it needed to be since it itself is basically another device driver), but the main interface is still PPC only.
Should it have been updated to a Universal app by now? Sure, but they didn't. And for now, the Scitex/Creo/Kodak plant in Israel is shut down. So no one knows when we'll ever see another update to this software. There is no third party software to drive these scanners. You also can't just replace scanners in this range with something else. There are no other flat bed scanners that even come close to the quality of an Eversmart Supreme.
So, the questions are:
1) A minor point. Can the server portion be turned off? I have no need for that, I just need SL Server to run a few PPC only apps in the VM under Lion.
2) As it is intended to be server software, can you run typical apps under it like Photoshop, Quicken, etc., just as you would any client version of OS X?
3) Biggest possible issue. Can OS X Server see FireWire (or USB) peripherals through a VM? Purchasing and installing SL Server would be a complete waste of time and money of the scanner software can't see the scanner from within a VM.
In short, the real question is, does anyone have any experience using any type of FireWire and/or USB devices through a VM? If items such as a FireWire hard drive can be seen from within a VM, then there shouldn't be any reason the scanner wouldn't work.
The main question with SL Server itself is this. I know by default it boots 64 bit. However, the scanner's device driver requires a 32 bit boot. So, can SL Server be set to boot 32 bit? If it can't, then this won't work.
Thanks!

Kurt Lang wrote:
If it works in a VM, then it doesn't matter years from now how new your Mac is, or what version of the Mac OS we're at. You just keep using the VM to run SL Server to drive the scanner from the same Mac.
There is no guarantee that you will continue to be able to run your VM configuration in the future. VM software is no different than any other. Any upgrade of either the VM software itself or the host OS could break your setup.
This is all because of Apple's short sighted decision to drop Rosetta. It couldn't possibly hurt anything to leave it in.
Apple hasn't dropped anything. Are you talking about reports from people with pirated copies of the Lion beta or people who have broken their NDA agreement with Apple? I also hear that Lion is full of bugs and won't run on the latest Macbook Pros. How do you know that Rosetta is something that Apple can even choose to "leave in" or "take out". It isn't Apple's software. They may not have a license for it and it simply may not run any more. That is just pure speculation.
Kodak, who now own Creo, who bought out Scitex, are of course partly to blame for never bringing the scanning software to a Universal or full Intel only app.
Did Scitex ever guarantee use of the scanner on future, unspecified hardware and operating systems? If so, then they are to blame. My guess is that they sold it to work on a specific platform and made a good faith effort to update it over the years to keep it running. Remember, a "lifetime guarantee" is the lifetime of the manufacturer and your scanner's manufacturer has already died twice.
What all VM software do support is USB ports. And you can get FireWire to USB adaptors, like this one really cheap. The unknown is whether the scanning software would find the scanner through a USB port.
I seem to recall many Garmin users flying into fits of rage at Parallels because their USB devices wouldn't work. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing running via a Firewire to USB adapter is even less guaranteed.
I don't know if your scanner will work in some future VM configuration. I doubt that anyone would know. I have used some funky USB software to drive microcontroller boards via Parallels and it worked fine. I have used Windows with good success in a VM, Linux with slightly less success, and Solaris barely runs. All of those are more fully supported than MacOS X Server as a guest OS.

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