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[ML] Data Stalls with BCM94322MC Even After Rebranding

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Aug 11, 2012
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Motherboard
ASUS PRIME H270 PLUS UEFI BIOS (Clover)
CPU
i5-7500 Kaby Lake
Graphics
Intel 630
I'm seeing numerous data dropouts or "stalls" on my BCM94322MC (4873330-001) on ML 10.8.1. My setup is a Gigabtye GA-Z77-DS3H + i5-3570K with Mountain Lion 10.8.1. Originally the card was reported as a Third Party Wireless card but with same data "stall" behavior. I then successfully rebranded as an Apple AirPort card using prasys's / sanguinarypc's method here to set subp to 0x008E. The card is now reported as an AirPort Extreme, but I still get dropouts every couple minutes (varies based on use) which can be corrected by toggling wifi on/off, even though ML still reports its associated with my AP. Using the same card & mini-PCI to PCI cradle in Win8 (in same PC) there were no issues with dropouts. When it does work, I get decent, solid throughput to my AP.

WiFi System report:
en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.81.21)
Locale: FCC
Country Code: US
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
AirDrop: Supported
Status: Connected

Has anyone seen this behavior in ML or with this BCM4322 card? I thought that my MultiBeast install for LAN drivers was stepping on the wifi driver but re-installing ML w/o installing LAN drivers has the same behavior. I also tried swapping PCI-x slots to no avail. I checked /var/log/system.log but there's nothing listed related to the stalls. This is frustrating!! Any pointers? I need to get this solved or else it's back to umm..don't want to say :(

Thanks!
 
UPDATE: I was able to improve stability (i.e., haven't seen drop outs) by removing the default ML IO80211 Family kext and replacing with a BCM43xx kext. However, the throughput seems to have dropped in half (22MBps vs 11MBps) at the expense of stability. I also noticed that the card FW version has changed too:

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.26)

Does anyone have a specific kext for this card? I'm using one I got at OSX 86net.
 
[SOLVED] [ML] Data Stalls with BCM94322MC Even After Rebranding

EPILOGUE: I was finally able to solve the data stalls. Here's what I did:

Rebrand from Original Product: 0×1380 / Vendor: 0x103C to New Vendor: 0x106B / Product: 0×0093
-> Original guide I followed suggested 0x008E for Product (subp) but this was not correct for this card.
Installed 10.8.2 combo update
/S/L/E/: Rename IO80211Family.kext to IO80211Family.kext.BAK; this effectively removes the kext
Install the "Broadcom43XXFamilyrev2.kext" using your favorite kext install utility
Reboot
Confirm "/S/L/E/Broadcom43XXFamilyrev2.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext" is loaded

New interface:
en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x93)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.26)

After that, the BCM94322MC is rock solid and can deliver 25Mbps DL on speedtest.net, pretty much the max Comcast will burst.
 
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