Advises needed (kext, BT and earphones)

[Hervé]

I just ran all sorts of test with acidanthera's Bluetooth patching kexts v2.52 since yesterday and it's systematically repeatable:

1. no functional Bluetooth on a cold boot into Catalina 10.15.4, no matter what, whether the kexts be injected, cached or a mix of both.
2. Bluetooth only functional as long as I remain on warm boots/reboots from an initial Windows boot (my Latitude 7490 is setup for dual boot).

I used the debug kexts version and, to my surprise, the logs are identical so it's a mystery to me as to what actually happens in Windows that does not happen on a cold boot into macOS. I hardly ever do a cold boot on this machine, I keep it in sleep mode most of the time, so I never really experienced too much trouble with BT before.

[Tubardus]

Thank you very much for all the time spent so far.

 

I will continue to test all BCM4350 zhx I find but with no real hope (v.6043, 6214, 6820 and 8784).

 

I have also another Wifi/BT card which was a "fake" dw1820a. I'll give it a try also and as well the original card which was delivered with the 7490. Who knows?

 

Until we figure a solution, can you please tell me what wifi/BT card do you would advise me to buy?

 

 

[Jake Lo]

I would recommend DW1560 or DW1830 but ever since they are known to work on Hackintoshes, the prices had risen dramatically.

When I first got them, they are $20 and $40 respectively, but now, they are going anywhere from $50 to $150. In certain country, you can't even get them.

 

[Hervé]

Problem is not that of firmware; something is done when booting Windows that does not happen when booting macOS. I'm convinced firmware is irrelevant here. If you reboot from Windows into macOS, you'd be Ok.

 

Best card would be Fenvi BCM94360NG but they cost about 45-50$/€.

 

[Tubardus]

OK! I will see that one and the DW1560

 

I have installed one "fake" 0VW3T3. It appears to be a BCM2045A0. I remember I saw zhx of that in resources of some Repo. I was wrong. Even with some searching I haven't found any available firmware for that card. Some people have tried to load it with Other BCM zhx without any success on macOS and Linux.  I was just loosing time.

 

When I will receive either the DW1560 or BCM94360NG, will I have to just plug it and maybe change some tings in the BRCM kexts or will I have to do a completely new installation (editing correctly from scratch config.plist)?

 

 

[Hervé]

@Tubardus, I've spent 2 x days on this DW1820a Bluetooth problem as it really bothered me. I believe I've sorted it out. It's a fairly long story (which is detailed here) but I basically identified that the issue we experienced was due to the name of the compressed firmware file referenced for our DW1820a BT module (0a5c:6412). Furthermore, I believe the devs who wrote the new Broadcom firmware patching kexts got it wrong on the matter of firmware version due to a misunderstanding regarding a non-generalised convention.

 

Anyway, I am now able to get Bluetooth working normally at all time, not just only when warm rebooting from Windows. 

 

Please try the attached kexts where I've modified Repo and PatchRAM3 to use uncompressed firmware v5974 rather than compressed v4688 which did not work. Copy them to /L/E, repair permissions and rebuild your cache. Then shutdown and perform a cold reboot. Bluetooth should then work and work all the time.

BrcmBluetoothInjector.kext.zip   BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext.zip   BrcmPatchRAM3.kext.zip

 

NB: you may experience a KP on 1st cold boot after rebuilding your cache. I do. I don't know why yet but it only happens on the very 1st cold reboot, never afterwards. 

 

[Tubardus]

Hello Hervé,

 

I installed your kexts as you suggested, did a cold boot. First I didn't saw any KP but after some reboots it did. What I can say is that the firmware shows now v5974 as expected. Also BT is now "discoverable“. BT detects most of devices around but unfortunately, it fails to connect.

 

I saw what you did by renaming the .hex in Repo. In my tests I also used .hex instead of .zhx. I think the zhx are only compressed hex but the gain is not very big due to the small size of these files. It sound strange that a rename of the firmware file can be sufficient to have it work. Maybe the firmware is used by another program which needs the file to be named in a precise manner.

 

Do you think I should test your method (renaming hex in Repo and change the patch) for different firmawares?

 

 

 

[Hervé]

To clarify the matter:

• I added my own extracted and uncompressed firmware files, hence the .hex extensions
• I tested shorter name with both uncompressed .hex files and compressed .zhx files. BT worked in both cases
• I did not rename a compressed .zhx file to a .hex extension; I only renamed the firmware files to a shorter name and BT started to work.
• The kexts I uploaded in my previous post contain my added uncompressed firmware v5974.

 

Make sure the BT module is actually fully enabled. Go to your BIOS settings and

1. disable Bluetooth + Apply change
2. enable Bluetooth + Apply change

then, reboot into macOS.

 

I don't think you need to redo all the tests I did, but it's up to you.

 

[Tubardus]

I made the changes in the BIOS, disabling and enabling. Nothing changed.

 

Maybe my DW1820A is slightly different from yours and therefore need another version of firmware?

 

 

 

[Hervé]

No, because on p1, you posted the same BT module ids (0a5c:6412).