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ABWB 802.11AC WI-FI With Bluetooth 4.0 (PCI-E) BCM943602CS and Mojave working OOB

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Joined
Dec 1, 2016
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113
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H
CPU
i5-3570K
Graphics
RX 570
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
I have just bought [New Version] ABWB 802.11AC WI-FI With Bluetooth 4.0 PCI-Express (PCI-E) BCM943602CS Combo Card For Hackintosh (MAC OS X) Airport Computers, Supports Hands-off from German Amazon:

409978


The card works out of the box in Mojave, no drivers needed but there were a few struggles with the installation
- worked both in a PCIe x1 and PCIe x4 slot so I could move it further away from the GPU
- initially I only got Wifi working, not BT. I had to plug the USB cable into a different USB header on the motherboard. Looks like only 1 of the usb headers works, so plugin this I lost front USB ports in the case (or maybe I need some USB inject kext?)

What works
- Wifi
- Bluetooth (I tried a BT keyboard)
- Showing old school SMS from iPhone in macOS
- AirDrop
- Unlocking macOS with Apple Watch (I had to log off from iCloud on macOS and log back in)
- Handoff (did not work at first, started working after a few hours for no apparent reason)
- Apple Pay initiated in Safari on macOS and confirmed on the Apple Watch
 

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The card you got is the *CS2, not the BCM943602CS — your card has two connectors for two antennas (one WiFi frequency, likely 2.4 and Bluetooth) while the *2CS has three antennas for 2.4, 5.0, BT. For anyone wondering, it seems the *2CS does not work OOB, I’m currently testing with Catalina. Did you ever upgrade to 10.15 with this card, OP?
 
The card you got is the *CS2, not the BCM943602CS — your card has two connectors for two antennas (one WiFi frequency, likely 2.4 and Bluetooth) while the *2CS has three antennas for 2.4, 5.0, BT. For anyone wondering, it seems the *2CS does not work OOB, I’m currently testing with Catalina. Did you ever upgrade to 10.15 with this card, OP?

Did you get it to work?

I only got Wifi OOB, no bluetooth :(
 
Did you get it to work?

I only got Wifi OOB, no bluetooth :(

Hey, Joakim, did you just join the board with this first post? If so, welcome. I soon after gave up after multiple days of trying different combinations and following older and more recent guides. I went with the BCM94360CD instead, a model with 4 antennas (I believe, 3 for WiFi, one for bluetooth) and that one worked perfectly after creating a USB port patch to limit the total number of available ports to macOS limit of 15 — keeping in mind that while WiFi runs over PCIE, BT runs over internal USB and therefore is affected by your port configuration.

I can recommend the *CD model, even though it is the most expensive of all supported chipsets, I think. I bought the Fenvi model that is occasionally available from Amazon or eBay around 60 to 80 EUR. WiFi, Bluetooth, Handoff, AirDrop, all working. The only extension I’m using is AirportBrcmFixup.
 
Hey, Joakim, did you just join the board with this first post? If so, welcome. I soon after gave up after multiple days of trying different combinations and following older and more recent guides. I went with the BCM94360CD instead, a model with 4 antennas (I believe, 3 for WiFi, one for bluetooth) and that one worked perfectly after creating a USB port patch to limit the total number of available ports to macOS limit of 15 — keeping in mind that while WiFi runs over PCIE, BT runs over internal USB and therefore is affected by your port configuration.

I can recommend the *CD model, even though it is the most expensive of all supported chipsets, I think. I bought the Fenvi model that is occasionally available from Amazon or eBay around 60 to 80 EUR. WiFi, Bluetooth, Handoff, AirDrop, all working. The only extension I’m using is AirportBrcmFixup.

Hi Francis and thank you for welcoming me :D Yes it was my first post at this forum (I mostly been lurking around) and I built my first Hackintosh/pc last weekend and I think it works pretty good, the only thing that I know of that doesn't work is bluetooth.

I misread your first comment, I got the CS2 not the 2CS – so it should work OOB, but your answer definitely gave me clue what the problem is – it is the USB 15 ports limit. I think I have a gazillion USB ports, and if I understand correctly each USB is x2 in ports? Anyway, thank you for the reply, I'll give this cart a couple of more tries, if I don't succeed maybe I should get the one you recommended.
 
Hi Francis and thank you for welcoming me :D Yes it was my first post at this forum (I mostly been lurking around) and I built my first Hackintosh/pc last weekend and I think it works pretty good, the only thing that I know of that doesn't work is bluetooth.

I misread your first comment, I got the CS2 not the 2CS – so it should work OOB, but your answer definitely gave me clue what the problem is – it is the USB 15 ports limit. I think I have a gazillion USB ports, and if I understand correctly each USB is x2 in ports? Anyway, thank you for the reply, I'll give this cart a couple of more tries, if I don't succeed maybe I should get the one you recommended.

Hey, yes, for me it wasn’t clear for quite a long time in setting up and working with multiple Hackintoshes how important the USB port limit is and why you can’t live forever on just running USBInjectAll.kext, I just put it aside like "no issues here”. Devices not available after sleep is one obvious problem of running into the limit as different ports and connected devices get either ports under (usable) or over (unusable) the limit. And you’re right, every USB3 port takes two from the limit, one for legacy 2.0 (called “High Speed” or “HS”) and 3.0 (called “Super Speed” or “SS”).

Remember that disabling USB2 but keeping USB3 for one port also means that mice and keyboards or hubs probably won’t work because they don’t actually connect over USB3, I also had that issue connecting the hubs of my Dell monitors.

Using Hackintool, you can sequentially probe all your available ports, delete possibly unused ones and then make the decision which ones to keep. You then create a DSDT patch through Hackintool and from thereon, you know which plugs are available and at which speeds. An easy method might be to sacrifice the top case ports and keep the rear ones, depending on your use.
 
So, your issue is that Bluetooth is not available while WiFi seems to work alright? You’re able to connect to wireless networks through the menu bar icon and system preferences? Can you turn it on and off through that, as well?
 
The card you got is the *CS2, not the BCM943602CS — your card has two connectors for two antennas (one WiFi frequency, likely 2.4 and Bluetooth) while the *2CS has three antennas for 2.4, 5.0, BT. For anyone wondering, it seems the *2CS does not work OOB, I’m currently testing with Catalina. Did you ever upgrade to 10.15 with this card, OP?

Yes, I upgraded to Catalina, running 10.15.4, Wifi and BT still working.
 
Hey, yes, for me it wasn’t clear for quite a long time in setting up and working with multiple Hackintoshes how important the USB port limit is and why you can’t live forever on just running USBInjectAll.kext, I just put it aside like "no issues here”. Devices not available after sleep is one obvious problem of running into the limit as different ports and connected devices get either ports under (usable) or over (unusable) the limit. And you’re right, every USB3 port takes two from the limit, one for legacy 2.0 (called “High Speed” or “HS”) and 3.0 (called “Super Speed” or “SS”).

Remember that disabling USB2 but keeping USB3 for one port also means that mice and keyboards or hubs probably won’t work because they don’t actually connect over USB3, I also had that issue connecting the hubs of my Dell monitors.

Using Hackintool, you can sequentially probe all your available ports, delete possibly unused ones and then make the decision which ones to keep. You then create a DSDT patch through Hackintool and from thereon, you know which plugs are available and at which speeds. An easy method might be to sacrifice the top case ports and keep the rear ones, depending on your use.


Thank you for clearing that up for me! I will look in to Hackintool and see if I can block some of the ports I have there. I didn't know that the USB mapping was a thing with hackintoshes. I have 8 USB ports on the back, 2 USB ports on the front of the chassi, I bought an internal USB hub for my MOBO cause it only had one port (and I needed to connect my CPU cooler, Kraken X62) so there is three usb connected to that AND I have the Cinema Display 27 inch with 4 USB ports where I currently have my mouse and keyboard connected to = Its a mess…

I honestly just need maybe 2 ports in the back so I will try to block some of them out :)

But I tried connecting the bluetooth USB directly to the motherboard but still couldn't get the Bluetooth to work. I tried I twice, Maybe I should check my plist-file in clover conf and see if I failed following the guide I used.

And yes, wifi works really well so that's nice, can turn it off and on and everything else.
 
Sorry for the delayed response, as some additional clarification: The port limit as far as I understand it only applies to your "root ports", let's say the number of physical ports on your machine. If you're using external hubs (like your cinema display), that does not count towards that limit. Effectively, I also have more than 15 (or 7 USB3, pairing HS and SS into one).

As far as I've understood it, you can check this with IORegistryExplorer and look for your XHC device, each of these has their own port limit. Common hardware only has one controller, though, that's also what my machine has. Real Macs work with the same limitation though Apple can easily pull hardware-level tricks like using multiple controllers when designing their own devices.
 
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