What is this slot for on a Jornada 720?

Hi Guys,
Just above the pcmcia slot on my Jornada 720 there is another slot.
All I can find out about it is that it accepts "Smart cards" but what are they?
It looks too big to be for a Smartmedia memory card.
Is it maybe a region specific thing?
Anyone know what it is and what it is used for?
Cheers,
Steve

Hi Steve,

it is for smart cards (not smart media!) like banking cards etc.
Unfortunately there is no software available for this usage

Andreas

The idea was you could lock your Jornada and only unlock it with a personal ID card (which you could pick, bank cards/store cards... anything with the little chip on it). That way your Jornada would be useless to anyone who pinched it. However, people complained about it possibly being hacked and details being stolen (although this is unfounded, all that is on a credit card is a customer-number, which is on all reciepts and so on). So, no one developed for it.

Thanks guys,
Does that mean it's pretty much useless or could the owner still use it as it was intended by slotting in a credit card and following the proper steps?

Pretty much useless. The only driver is a basic IO one, which wouldnt let you do anything. The JLime project has some plans to support it though, so keep waiting...

If a fluent programmer decided to implement the feature into CE, it could be done. Only thing is that it hasn't.

If you slie a smart card into it right now, it'll wake up and a popup will appear on the screen informing you that the hardware detected a card. Aside from that however, it's of little use. Nice party trick though.

Getting credit cards in it is not a good idea though as the raised numbers are... well, raised that little bit much.

TIPS: you can use it to store businese cards (a couple). When you pull it out people would think you just printed it! You can even make it warm if you have a WiFi card in the PC Card slot activated for a while. Don't forget to make the remark that you would have beamed the card electronically if the recepient had a PDA/phone with IR port.

C:Amie, when I inserted a non chip card, I did get a response,

So it does work then?

Anything to break the ice!!! It never amazes me how clients would drool once you take out something like the J or my old Psion Netbook. I tell ya, a good 30 minutes would go by just talking about the gadget and showing how useless their PPCs were!!!

Hey, it works, but there's no information on what cards it supports making it a near impossible task. I did some smart card development a few years back so still have some things around, but nothing of any use with the 720.

Wes,

As I outlined above, it does bite when prompted.
You can put anything in there, and all I've ever gotten from it is "Unidentified". The missing "driver" is the software which makes it identified.

That's the strange thing - the stub of a driver is there... How much is implemented? Well, I just don't know.

Execute "secusage.exe" from the \windows directory on a command line, select "business" (or is it corporate - not got a 7xx with me at the moment) and then go to security: a new tab has appeared.

I do have a variety of smart cards designed for security, including a probably exceedingly rare "smart card for Windows" MS-branded smart card, and nothing works. Then again, I don't really know what it's looking for... I could hack through the SDK sometime to see if there's any meaningful APIs, I suppose, but I don't really feel the need to

"feel" it Chiark, go on, you know you want to

Salut chiark , do you try also with one Windows powered smart card with an windows certificate on it ? I have only blank cards (unformatted - Atmel90sc3232) and the "Initialize" and "log on using smart card" fields are innactive..