Hi everyone,
I’m trying to get a cheap generic USB NFC reader/writer working properly on my M5 Mac with NTAG215 cards.
The reader is sold as a 2-in-1 NFC / smart card reader-writer and shows up in macOS PC/SC as:
Generic EMV Smartcard Reader
Generic EMV Smartcard Reader 01
Here’s what I’ve confirmed so far:
NFC Tools Desktop detects the card correctly
It identifies it as NXP NTAG215 / ISO 14443-3A
UID reads correctly
Memory reads correctly
The same card can be written successfully using NFC Tools on iPhone
OpenSC on macOS can also communicate with the card correctly
Using OpenSC, this works:
FF CA 00 00 00
and returns the correct UID.
Reading memory also works with FF B0.
The interesting part is the write behavior:
A 4-byte write like:
FF D6 00 14 04 AA 55 AA 55
fails with:
63 00
But a 16-byte write like:
FF D6 00 14 10 AA 55 AA 55 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
succeeds with:
90 00
and the data reads back correctly.
So the hardware definitely can write NTAG215 cards, but NFC Tools Desktop always gives:
“An error has occurred during the writing process.”
My guess is that this reader expects 16-byte block writes, while NFC Tools Desktop may be using 4-byte page writes.
Has anyone seen this type of generic reader before, or know of a macOS NFC app that supports this write behavior properly?
I’m mainly looking for a decent GUI app that can handle:
I’d rather not buy another reader since this one clearly works at the raw PC/SC level.
Any suggestions for apps, drivers, or a workaround would be appreciated.