I thought the whole point of standards like ISO 7816 was that they define an interface preceisely so that you do not need specific knowledge of what's actually inside any particular implementation?
Thats true for reading the device, for example you can use Fun card or pic card to decode satellite channels, they both have same pad pin diagram for reading by the CAM. Now if I want to program the card first I need to program the chip with a program called bootloader(chip type specific) which gives access to the internal EEPROM throgh the serial port of a PC because there is no direct contacts between the internal eeprom on the card and the actual pins. After the internal eeprom has been updated, you download the actual ISO program (chip specific again) to the chip weather it is atmel or PIC or whatever.

Mahmood