# drivers for TI PCI6515 smartcardreader

## meyerm

Hi,

has anybody an idea how to get this to work?

```
03:01.5 Communication controller: Texas Instruments PCI6515 SmartCard Controller
```

I haven't found anything on the net despite a PDF at TI which says that TI does indeed offer linux drivers. But that was all...  :Sad: 

But I didn't find anything in the existing kernel sources or with google. A working GnuPG cardreader inside my notebook would be really nice. 

Thank you

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## smitty_one_each

I did some research on that SmartCard reader about two months ago, and the PCI unit in my Dell D800 has no love whatsoever, except under LoseXP.

I do have a USB version of a reader, and, by the power of VMWare, you can boot your NTFS partition under linux, and hand the reader over to the child, but I haven't got that far yet.

Draws much vacuum, indeed.

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## widan

Texas Instruments is not very Linux-friendly in general. There are probably Linux drivers... but only for OEMs who integrate the chip in their product (think of an embedded system using this chip and running Linux).

Maybe someone will reverse engineer the Windows driver, but unfortunately most people have no need for that kind of device, so no interest to write a driver  :Crying or Very sad: .

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## meyerm

Thank you both for answering.

 *widan wrote:*   

> Texas Instruments is not very Linux-friendly in general.

 

I feared it... This sentence above can be seen quite often.

I do have a DELL Latitude too. And DELL isn't very Linux-friendly either. Just great, yet another useless piece of hardware.  :Sad:  Very disappointing - would have been great feature.

Thank you again

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## cylgalad

Take a look there : http://www.webcon.ca/~imorgan/tifm21/ maybe that drivers might work (at least IF you manage to have it fit with your kernel...)

Also there : http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Welcome

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## smitty_one_each

That looks like some genuinely interesting, recent stuff.

Unfortunately, my smart card is one of those military ones.

I'd love to have something like this be my first real intro to serious kernel work, but b0rking the card, which would happen at least twice amidst such an endeavor, would likely trigger a bollocking.

Are you aware of any businesses using such, so that I can get a card that isn't so precious?

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## meyerm

Well, normal SmartCard with a few bytes memory should be available for around 1€ in small quantities. As long as there is no "intelligence/computing power" in it... GnuPG cards are available for around 15€ here in germany (don't know if they are somewhere cheaper, I didn't search).

So, poking around with the interface shouldn't be that expensive when you start with the memory only cards  :Smile: 

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