Chipcard-Patch 0.21 review
DownloadImportant: Chipcard-Patch patch is not needed since 10.
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Important: Chipcard-Patch patch is not needed since 10.4.6 anymore. Please upgrade to 10.4.6, the bug was present in versions 10.4.0 to 10.4.5.
Chipcard-Patch is intended to be a patch for Mac OS X 10.4 and MacGiro. Its major function is that it permits the user to start the chip card reader system services (pcscd) and thus use chip card readers at an arbitrary point of time when needed. In addition it is a quick launcher for MacGiro (which is an online banking application used in Germany) allowing a certain MacGiro database to be opened directly.
Localized in German and English. Very easy to install and unistall (drag and drop).
Background:
Due to a bug in Mac OS X 10.4.0 the process pcscd is not automatically started when a chip card reader is attached, so a card reader can normally only be used if it is connected to the computer before system start and if it remains connected permanently. This program allows the user to easily start the chip card reader services at any desired point of time so that the card reader can be connected and used only when needed. The program checks if the process pcscd is running (as root) and attempts, if necessary, to start it (this requires an administrator password to be entered). (The application makes sure that only a single instance of pcscd runs, this single instance being run as root.)
The advantage of this program over other methods to cope with this problem is that it doesn't change any system files. Possible updates to Mac OS X that deal with the chip card services are thus not affected by the installation of this program. Likewise, these updates don't interfere with this program since this program only launches pcscd if necessary.
To avoid that the user first needs to start pcscd using this program and then must open the desired MacGiro database by clicking on the appropriate database file (or opening MacGiro and then opening the database using the "Open" menu item), this program permits opening a specified MacGiro database immediately after pcscd has been started. This way a simple click on the application symbol can launch the card reader services and open a MacGiro database afterwards. This function can also be used as a quick launcher for MacGiro, independetly of the chip card patch function (due to a bug in MacGiro the user setting to automatically open the last opened MacGiro database the next time is not respected).
Finally, the application can terminate itself automatically after a certain idle time (after having performed its services).
What's New:
Added a small delay before starting pcscd to give enough time for killing of processes (if applicable) to complete.
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