Broadcom CCID readers

Par inconnu — http://www.broadcom.com/company/factsheet.php?source=top, marque déposée, https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1691847

Broadcom updated the firmware of some of their (bogus) devices. For example the reader Broadcom Corp 5880 (idProduct 0x5805) is bogus. The problem is that frames bigger than 64 bytes (wMaxPacketSize) fails on the contact reader.

Broadcom 5880

The 5880 device name is used by all the 8 Broadcom devices in my list. So it is not easy to know exactly what device is present in a computer. You can use the GNU/Linux command line lsusb or my program parse to have more details.

Dell laptops

Par Dell — Dell, Domaine public, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10341993

The Broadcom devices are often present in Dell laptop.

For example the Dell Latitude E5570 has one such Broadcom 5880 device. This is the version idProduct 0x5805 with the bug described above.

Firmware upgrade

Dell now provides a firmware upgrade Dell ControlVault2 Driver and Firmware that includes a fix for the smart card reader. After the firmware upgrade the smart card reader has a new idProduct 0x5834.

This device is already in the "should work" list and will be included in the CCID driver version 1.4.25 (available soon).

Contactless reader

The Broadcom 5880 in the Dell Latitude E5570 (with idProduct 0x5805 and 0x5834 after the upgrade) also provides a contactless interface. But this contactless interface is still not supported by my CCID driver.

I guess the interface is not really CCID compliant and no RF (radio frequency) field is emitted by the reader. I guess a special command has to be send to the reader to activate the RF field, maybe to limit the power consumption when no contactless card is used.

Conclusion

3 Broadcom 5880 devices are in the "unsupported" list. Maybe the firmware upgrade will fix all of them. At least the upgrade fixes 2 of them (the 0x5805 as above and also the 0x5800 converted in 0x5832)