I have a SCM 3500 Microsystems USB Smartcard reader that works just fine in a non-virtualized 10.7 client. I have virtualized a 10.7 client machine and I wanted to use the same Smartcard reader in this virtualized environment, but I have had no luck getting the host to use the reader. It shows up on the list of USB Items, but when selected, and with a smartcard in the reader, the Smartcard is not read and the reader appears to be non-operational. When switched to the non-virtualized MacOS 10.7 client (the actual OS running parallels), the smartcard reader springs to life and the smartcard within the reader shows up in the keychain. It's unclear to me why this is happening, since in the Parallels Windows 7 host that I have, the USB reader works and smartcards can be read from the reader in the Windows host. Is there a known issue with the SCM 3500 Smartcard reader and a virtualized MacOS 10.7.1 host? (same occurred in 10.7). Is there a setting that I need to change or tweak in order for smartcard readers to work in MacOS? Here is the current parallels build that I am using: Build 7.0.14924 (Revision 699487; October 3, 2011) Thanks and I look forward to hearing back from support on this, since Smartcard testing is very important to our company and if it's not working in MacOS, it would be a real bummer and most likely we will need to look at VMWare 4.0, which I would prefer not to have to use - VMWare 3.0 was not a solution for Smartcard testing under Windows or MacOS, and I one of the reasons why I switched was because of USB Smartcard reader support in Parallels Windows hosts.
