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Re: pcmcia
On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Adam Shostack wrote:
> P.J. Ponder wrote:
>
> | obligatory crypto comment: has anyone looked at the iPower card and
> | gotten one to play with? Where else could one get a PCMCIA card that was
> | programmable and had a little memory on it? How hard would it be to make
> | one - in other words, what could we get the cost down to for an
> | encrypting pcmcia card? there couldn't be much to it, really, could there?
>
> I got one, its very badly documented; theres some source in
> Visual basic for windoze. I haven't had time to track down real docs
> so I can do anything. Anyone know who I can call to get real
> documentation?
>
We've been doing some work with the thing and have actually got a crypto
product built for a customer. Some things to know:
1. It' unbelievably slow. Key generation on this things takes an order
of magnitude longer than what you see in the "average" PC environment.
Encrypt/decrypt times are equally extended, but aren't that obnoxious if
5-20 second/'average' e-mail message lag times don't torque your user.
2. Buy the PersonaCard API Developer's Kit or you're hosed. It's the
only real source of relevant data. It's got Visual C++ source in it,
etc. You also can then contact Nat-Semi with questions. You can order
the thing (I think it's around $100, but I'm not sure) from:
iPower Technical Support
iPower Business Unit
National Semiconductor Corporation
1090 Kifer Road, Mail Stop 16-225
Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3737
3. The drivers suck. They appear to be essentially a "protocol stack"
that gets loaded into memory (LOTS of memory) and then they conflict with
just about everything. Lock ups are common. These things have to load
in sequence, before anything else, or they won't work. We have not been
able to get them to peacefully coexist with any other PCMCIA drivers, nor
with such things as CD-ROM drivers or tape backup drivers.
Summary: A fun thing to play with, interesting toy, but probably not
something you can actually make useful (yet).
Enjoy.
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