How to deal with BasicCard states

In Reply to: How to start with BasicCard posted by zeitcontrol on November 28, 2002 at 08:57:57:

BasicCard knows several states during lifetime. The main states are "LOAD", "TEST" and "RUN".

the "LOAD" state is for downloading new code to the card. The download program switches the card automatically to this state and switch it after download either to "TEST" or "RUN" mode.

the "TEST" state is for testing the application. Basically all functions are working as in "RUN" state but there are less security features with this state. From the "TEST" mode you can switch to any other state so you can repeat your downloads during development as often as you want.

the "RUN" state is the state in that the (end) customer should receive the card. It is no more possible to switch the state to another state you can be sure that nobody can misuse the card.
But there is no way to alter this state so beware
using this state during development.

As an excerpt from the BasicCard manual 7.7 (Pre-Defined Commands) these are the main differences according enabled commands/security between the "TEST" and the "RUN" state.

Read EEProm
For the "TEST" state it is possible to read back the program/user data without any security requirements. If the card is in "RUN" state you have to use Start Encryption with Key 0 to access the program/user data. Therefor you should not embed Key 0 in your main PC application but should store it in a save place for error recovering (eg. in case of a malfunction card program to access the eeprom variables)

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