xEM stopped working?

Hey guys. I have been having terrible luck lately and could really use some help. First my NExT is doa, then my trusty xEM stops working :cry:

I had an HID card written to it and have only overwritten it a couple times over the past 9 months or so. I tried overwriting it today (with lf hid clone -r) to switch from my school id to my work badge and it wasn’t working. Everything seemed fine but when I would “lf hid reader” or “lf search” it would just return my school credentials. I have a custom ferrite core barrel antenna (paired with a PM3 Easy on Iceman) that works great, and I was previously getting 20mm reads so that is not the issue. I thought I remembered potentially having password issues previously(but in hindsight that was with a different card) so I ran “lf t5 -chk” (not in test mode!) and about halfway through aborted it by hitting enter on my keyboard with my other hand. Now a couple hours later I am getting nothing. Can’t read or write. I am devastated. Any help is very much appreciated.

Edit: I have tried the test mode writing block 0 command and still cannot read :frowning:

Edit 2: My b for not finding and trying this but I just went through it all a couple times and still got nothing. Does that mean it is dead?

Edit 3: tried just spam wiping it probably 10-20 times and then got the following to detect once but have been unable to get it again. What are the odds that is just a fluke?

Edit 4: Not really sure what I did but I think I saved it. I was able to read and write and I am just not gonna touch it anymore :sweat_smile:

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Are you sure it isn’t just bad coupling? The Proxmark3 Easy LF antenna isn’t the best for cylindrical RFID tags although it is possible if you position it at the sweet spot.

I don’t mean to be a dick, I genuinely appreciate you trying to help, but I have spent the last month debugging a dead t5577 in my NExT so I can say for certain that I promise it is not a Proxmark LF antenna issue.