Please tell me the basics of Smart Card Technology and the components involved???
Quote:
> Hi There,
> I am looking for some information on the development of the software in
> Smart Cards. Also the components involved in the complete scenario. Any
help
> will be highly appreciated
This is a tough one. Quite a lot of smart cards are created using a
masked-ROM microprocessor, and can therefore not accept programming from
you.
Some chip manufacturers are creating smart cards that you can program
yourself. These smart cards are often based on the Microchip Pic16 or Pic18
platforms. Other microprocessors has been embedded into smart cards as well.
As you are basically talking about a single-chip microprocessor development
system, I wouldn't expect you to find one programmable in eVB anytime soon.
It just takes far too many resources for a processor that small.
As the development cycle depends way too much on what you want the smart
card to do and the specific card you are going to use, I would recommend for
you to go to your selected vendor/manufacturer and get hold of a datasheet
on the specific card you want to use, a databook for the processor family,
and maybe a C compiler for the processor family as well.
When you have all that, it is just an easy little programming cycle:
1) Determine what you want the card to do (if you haven't already done that)
2) Write as much documentation on how you want the software to accomplish
what you described in (1)
3) Fire up your preferred editor and fill in some .txt files with your
program, following the rules and regs set out in (2)
4) Compile or assemble your program
5) Program the smart card with your target .hex codes.
6) If you find that the programmer tells you that this can't be done in the
size processor you have in the smart card, either find another card with
more RAM/ROM or go back to (1) or (2) and redesign the specifications to fit
the card.
7) Testing, testing, testing. Go back to (1), (2), (3) or (4) as applicable
when you detect errors.
That's all there is to it.
(Note: There are mailing lists out there that has a lot more knowledge on
programming microprocessor-based systems than this newsgroup.)
Keld Laursen
