Dell Latitude e6520 SIM slot usable for generic smartcards?

Hello Flux,

The Latitude has a SIM card slot. The SIM card slot would only support mobile networking SIM cards. 

The system also has a Smart Card Reader:



Hence please help me understand which slot are you referring to. 

Awaiting your response! 

Hi Allen,

thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

I am refering to the SIM card slot as shown in your first picture.

What I would like to know is if I can make it work for other SIMs than mobile networking.

Technically, a SIM is also just a smartcard, just of a specific form factor if I am not mistaken.

Is there any technical reason I cannot use that slot with a card that fits the SIM form factor but is not related to mobile networking, eg. http://g10code.com/graphics/newcard-fs.jpg ?

Cheers,

Flux

Given that the slot is wired to work in tandem with a WWAN card, it's unlikely any other application will work - the SIM card by itself cannot be used for anything.  Only with a WWAN card will it work.

Well a WWAN card is also just a minipci-e card, so for your theory to make sense Dell would have to take two standard interfaces (smartcard and minipci-e) and cripple both of them in such a way that they are now only usable in very limited use cases. Makes me wonder if that is a reasonable assumption.

Again, if you think so, you're welcome to try.  I agree with the Dell moderator though - what you're trying to do is unlikely to work.  

I think you missunderstand the question, I do not intent to use the slot with a mobile network provider card or connect my laptop to a wwan network at all. The question is: since mobile network provider SIMs are a very specific type of smartcard, and the Dell SIM slot is in fact not hardwired to a 3g modem, is it reasonable to assume that the slot is in fact not limited to any specific type of smartcard?

You'll have to try it and let us know.  Cell phone providers lock the SIMs to their network devices all the time, so it's more common than not that only those devices that are designed to work, will work.

Since there is a separate smart card reader available, I don't understand why insisting on using the SIM card slot.

A question for Dell support is where can I find a list of Smartcard supported by the Smartcard reader for use in the authentication process in Win 7/8.