HID Omnikey 5321 Desktop USB Contact & Contactless Reader

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Level 2

275 points

HID Omnikey 5321 Desktop USB Contact & Contactless Reader

Has anybody tried the Omnikey 5321 Smart Card Reader on Snow Leopard? I am thinking of getting one, and would like to know what other's experiences have been. It appears that this reader should be compatible with Snow Leopard as it is properly USB class compliant; however, the last document discussing smart card reader compatibility from Apple dates to Tiger. (But with excellent support at that time!)

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 16, 2011 6:14 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Hildum Author

Level 2

275 points

May 27, 2011 2:50 PM in response to Eric Hildum

I have picked up this unit and can report the following:

1. By default, only the contact reader is supported by the standard Snow Leopard configuration. I can see the reader and the contact interface, but as I do not have a contact card, was unable to test this further.

2. HID supplies a driver for the contactless interface that can be downloaded from hidglobal.com. This does work and I was able to verify that the contactless reader does work and can read cards using the pcsctest application.

I did see a number of issues:

1. The device, containing two readers, enumerates as three readers, the last two being the contactless readers. I think this is a bug in the pcscd or pcsctest.

2. Sleep seems to mess up pcscd - the reader no longer recognizes contactless cards (contact cards were not tested) after a sleep. The workaround is to unplug the reader for a moment (allowing pcscd to die) then plug the unit back in. I do not know if this is an issue in pcscd or the drivers supplied by HID.

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Answer 2

Aug 17, 2011 7:27 AM in response to Eric Hildum

I'm interested in this unit as well and am currently researching Mac support for it. You might check out this post:

http://blog.threatforward.com/2010/02/28/the-omnikey-5321-usb/

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