DW1820a - the general troubleshooting thread

[tqbinh]

@Hervé Thanks for prompt reply. The seller agrees for refund but the card is cheap (14 USD) so I decided to keep for research. Anyway, it works fine without any hack in my Dell 3040 micro (but doesn't work in Lenovo M900 mini).  

The problem I am encountering is likely due to Lenovo's specific design, not the card. When I use Dell DW1707 (Atheros 9565) in T440s, OSX shows that the wifi hardware is installed, but it search for wireless network forever. The DW1707 card works fine in other desktop (the Dell 3040 micro, Lenovo M900 mini, and HP 600 G3 mini).

Can you help me to fight with Bluetooth PAN described in previous post?

[menomac]

@tqbinh my card works flawlessly in Win10, wifi + bluetooth.

 

In Mojave, I even had the bluetooth appear once in sysprefs>network while trying to find a workaround. I think it was when I installed the bcrmfirmware etc kexts.

 

I did not touch anything in s/l/e as this is a vanilla install.

 

[Naidis]

On 8/5/2019 at 5:16 PM, nickhx said:

Thanks credit to @headkaze

How Did you get your Apple Watch unlock consistently working (I have seen your other post but replicating those settings only enables me to unlock once).  Also does personal hotspot via handoff work for you (clicking iPhone hotspot connection in WiFi menu without hotspot being on or phone connected via Bluetooth).

I switched back to BCM94360CS2 and the Apple Watch unlock is not working either, while it worked well before I switched to DW1820A, consistently.

So I assume some config was changed in my macOS permanently and I might need a fresh install.

[vichaos]

On 6/5/2019 at 4:39 PM, Naidis said:

I put a photo in the hidden area of my reply here. I attached 2 photos below too.

I can't explain the reason though, I just followed some threads elsewhere when I was configuring.

i think this methods will be working if the card is still healthy. I bought 2 cards last week and I have been using one of them since then. Each time i boot up my XPS it was able to last for 10-30mins before making my XPS freezed and I had to force reboot many times until I found this thread. At first i was trying to mod the currently using one but it seems like the wifi interface can't be detected at all only Bluetooth was working and I gave up. However, a few hours later  I grap a new card  and doing exactly the samethings and surprisingly, it's working, no more disconnect, freeze, or kernel panic at all. 

 

p.s. both of them are CN-08PKF4

 

Thanks for sharing you have made my day

[tqbinh]

I have some progress here with my Thinkpad T440s running High Sierra 10.13.6, BIOS version 2.36 (no whitelist) and "fake" DW1820A OVW3T3 with ID=1028:0023:

1. Concerning bluetooth, as @Hervé said, the kext taken from a Chinese site (see my previous post in page 11) is actually the IO80211Family.kext from OSX 10.10.5 Yosemite and it causes Wifi instability and prevent Bluetooth PAN to get IP address (and therefore bluetooth is connected to IPhone as hotspot, but no internet). I revert back IO80211Family.kext and Bluetooth PAN come back. So finally I used @nickhx driver in this post. It loads firmware correctly, but bluetooth mouse and keyboard have some lag (tested with Thinkpad Compact bluetooth keyboard), but Bluetooth PAN works as expected.
2. Concerning Wifi: adding PCI device properties (I used PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1c,0x1)/Pci(0x0,0x0)) does not allow the system to boot. I need to disable Wifi port in BIOS (Security -> I/O port access) to make the computer boot to Mac OS.

 

Fortunately, I found a post on tonycrap (member midi1996) describing some kexts to patch to disable all (or most of?) native broadcom kexts, except for AirPort.Brcm4360.kext (see below), then the system boots normally. Wifi and bluetooth work as expected. However, the second and subsequent shutdowns give a waitq error, but it is acceptable for me at this moment. 

Note that I currently use all native 10.13.6 kext, only add  @nickhx kexts in C/K/O, add PCI Device Properties as @Hervé and kexts to patch as bellow. I attached my config.plist file for reference.

 

Spoiler

            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent BrcmNIC-MFG kexts from attaching to DW1820A, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.AirPort.BrcmNIC-MFG</string>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent BCMWLANFirmware 4355 from attaching to DW1820A, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.BCMWLANFirmware4355.Datastore</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent BCMWLANFirmware 4355 from attaching to DW1820A, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.BCMWLANFirmware4355.Hashstore</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent BCMWLANFirmware 4364 from attaching to DW1820A, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.BCMWLANFirmware4364.Datastore</string>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent BCMWLANFirmware 4364 from attaching to DW1820A, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.BCMWLANFirmware4364.Hashstore</string>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
            <dict>
                <key>Comment</key>
                <string>Prevent IO80211 - BrcmNIC from attaching to anything, inspired from CoolStar&apos;s I2C patch</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>com.apple.driver.AirPort.BrcmNIC</string>
                <key>Find</key>
                <data>SU9LaXQ=</data>
                <key>Disabled</key>
                <false/>
                <key>Replace</key>
                <data>SU9LaXM=</data>
                <key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>

 

 

config.zip

[Hervé]

Maybe you should try the pin masking...

[tqbinh]

I tried pin masking, but it has no effect, the T440s can not boot to OSX.

[DalianSky]

Hey, @nickhx.
I have a Subsystem Vendor ID: 1028 Subsystem ID: 075a NIC, currently WIFI and Bluetooth are already driven, the known Bluetooth information is: Vendor ID: 0x0A5C
   Product ID: 0x6414;
Only the firmware of Bluetooth always stays at: v7 c4096, can you help me recompile a driver for 0A5C:6414?
Many thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

[HorstBrack75]

23 hours ago, tqbinh said:

Fortunately, I found a post on tonycrap (member midi1996) describing some kexts to patch to disable all (or most of?) native broadcom kexts, except for AirPort.Brcm4360.kext (see below), then the system boots normally. Wifi and bluetooth work as expected. However, the second and subsequent shutdowns give a waitq error, but it is acceptable for me at this moment. 

Note that I currently use all native 10.13.6 kext, only add  @nickhx kexts in C/K/O, add PCI Device Properties as @Hervé and kexts to patch as bellow. I attached my config.plist file for reference.

 

 

I got a CN-08PKF4 and I got it to work somehow work in MacOS using:

 

BrcmPatchRAM2.kext, BrcmFirmwareData.kext in EFI/CLOVER/Kext/Other.

 

"Somehow" means that I get KP booting MacOs two times before it actually boots.

 

The strange thing now is that WiFi stopped working in Win10 now. When I click on update driver in Windows 10, I get a Windows bluescreen now.

 

Did I maybe alter the firmware and break the card now?

 

 

 

[Hervé]

The firmware only applies to the Bluetooth module of the card, not the wifi part.

 

On p10 (2nd post from the top), @astray provided a link to the Windows driver that updates BT firmware to v4689. You can use this safely to update the card. Then, you may use the following patching kexts in macOS. All this works for me but the card already worked well when showing firmware version v5799 or v5803 (see posts on p5 to p7).