Hello FreeCalypso community, I am continuing active development of fc-simtool and its companion utilities, our suite of tools for working with SIM cards. The program purpose statement "working with SIM cards" includes all of the following:
* Tinkering and experimenting with SIM cards directly at the protocol level, sending arbitrary low-level commands without the tool standing in the way or imposing any arbitrary restrictions of its own. * Testing operator-issued SIMs to see if they still have the classic GSM SIM application present and enabled, thus distinguishing between good and evil SIMs. * Performing all of the standard functions which GSM SIM specs define as available to all users: enabling, disabling and changing PINs, reading and writing SIM phonebooks, etc. * In the case of programmable SIMs, fully programming them to the last bit. fc-simtool began its life in January of this year in our freecalypso-hwlab Hg repository, then in February fc-simtool and its companion utilities moved to a new repository named fc-pcsc-tools, but I just had to move the tools once again to another new repository named fc-sim-tools: https://www.freecalypso.org/hg/fc-sim-tools/ The latest repository move was necessitated by expansion of functional scope: the new versions of fc-simtool and fc-uicc-tool are no longer tied to pcsc-lite like the previous versions were, instead they support multiple card access back ends. My vision is to support 3 different ways of accessing SIM cards for manipulation with fc-simtool: 1) The card to be operated on can be inserted into a USB CCID "reader" like HID Omnikey 3121 or 6121 - this access path requires pcsc-lite software stack. 2) In addition to the above USB CCIDs that require the massive sw complexity of pcsc-lite, I am seeking to add support for much simpler "Phoenix" serial SIM interface devices - these devices present themselves as /dev/ttyUSBx and can be operated directly, without needing any drivers, libraries, daemons or other extraneous software. 3) The card to be operated on can be sitting inside a Calypso phone or FC development board - this access path has just been implemented and proven working in manual developer mode (manually running each of the required pieces and manually connecting them together); the only part that remains to be implemented is the fc-simint front end program that will tie everything together for practical use with an end user hat on. Throughout my journey of working with SIM cards, I continue to uphold my belief that those of us who are going to operate our own GSM networks for the purpose of providing service to classic GSM/2G phones should issue our own SIM cards that are pure GSM SIM, without USIM or ISIM baggage. Right now the only vendor I was able to find who sells programmable SIMs of this type without cost-prohibitive MOQ is Grcard, hence I continue to work with them despite various problems exhibited by this vendor. Grcard surely make USIM/ISIM cards too, for all those proprietary smartphone lovers who actually want LTE/5G crap, but I am not buying any of those, instead the only Grcard model I work with is what they call their GSM card, which is the same GrcardSIM2 model that was branded as sysmoSIM-GR2 back in 2013 - no change in 7+ years! I am currently trying to buy 200 of these GrcardSIM2 cards, with custom printing on the plastic with our own FreeCalypso branding - if this venture goes through successfully, our FC replacement for the discontinued sysmoSIM-GR2 will be called FCSIM1. And here is the best part: fc-simtool will be the *official* tool for programming these FCSIM1 cards! Our competitor pySim-prog also has support for programming this card model, added back in 2013-12, but it is a very primitive and restricted tool compared to fc-simtool. pySim people are now working on a new tool that works as an interactive shell like ours, but AFAICT all that work is UICC/USIM/ISIM-centric, and if they do support the classic GSM SIM protocol at all, I don't see what they can offer that fc-simtool does not already do just as well or better. The bottom line is: if you are interested specifically in the classic GSM 11.11 SIM protocol and the classic GSM 11.11 SIM card file system, as opposed to all latter-day UICC/USIM/ISIM stuff, then fc-simtool is the very best tool there is! If there is any other tool out there (has to be specifically for classic GSM SIM and not USIM/ISIM) that can beat fc-simtool in functionality or flexibility, I challenge you to name it! Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community