<< Solved >> Big Sur, AirportBrcmFixup.kext and BCM4322 Wifi card problem

[buttadeus]

Hi, my wifi card stoped working with Catalina but I was able to activate it again using IO80211Family.kext from Mojave. When I tried to do the same with big Sur, I got Kernel panic and I have to remove it.
I tried to replace IO80211Family.kext with AirportBrcmFixup.kext but I can't make it work. Even if my card should be supported (is 0x14E4 0x432B) I cannot make it work. I couldn't figure out readme.md. Can someone point me to a guide for AirportBrcmFixup.kext?
Thank you!

 

[Edhawk]

The kext that supported your WiFi card was removed from macOS when Catalina was released. Neither of the remaining two networking kexts support your card.



Have you tried using a Fake ID for the Broadcom card, one that is still supported to see if that works. Fake ID 43ba14e4 or 43a014e4 might be worth a try.

You may also need to tell macOS which driver to use, the following explains how to use the boot argument:

brcmfx-driver=2 enables only AirPortBrcmNIC kext for loading,

0 - AirPortBrcmNIC-MFG,​

1 - AirPortBrcm4360,​

2 - AirPortBrcmNIC,​

3 - AirPortBrcm4331​

 

[buttadeus]

Hi, my card shows in info.plist of AirportBrcmFixup.kext.
I tried using both Fake ID you gave me with brcmfx-driver=2 but still not working (I hope I did it right) .
Thank you for trying to help!

 

[Edhawk]

Which version of AirPortBrcmFixup.kext are you using?

Unfortunately simply checking that the Device ID is present in the kext, doesn't mean the device will work.

Yes, that is how to insert a Fake ID for the WiFi card using Clover Configurator. Pity it didn't help.

You may need to get hold of a copy of the AirPortBrcm4331.kext from macOS Mojave and add it to your /CLOVER/kexts/Other folder.

If you do add the kext to your other kexts folder, for injection by Clover you need to remove the Fake ID from the config.plist.

 

[buttadeus]

IO80211Family.kext from Mojave works on Catalina but gives kernel panic on Big Sur boot. AirPortBrcm4331.kext alone is not working on both 10.15.7 or 11.0.1. I removed Fake ID.

 

[Edhawk]

OK, I have been searching for an answer to this issue and found a post over at another forum that covers your WiFi card issues.

Here is the information from the OSXL post by Herve:

"Catalina 10.15 dropped support for BCM4322 (14e4:432b). AirPortBrcm4331 plugin kext of IO80211Family kext was abandoned. This affects cards such as DW1510. Workaround is to simply install Mojave's (or High Sierra's) IO80211Family kext, i.e. copy to /L/E + repair permissions + rebuild cache (leaving /S/L/E untouched) or, if that does not work, replace Catalina's IO80211Family kext in /S/L/E by Mojave's (or High Sierra's) but this will need to be done again after each update because vanilla kexts will be re-instated."

"Big Sur 11.0.1 supports BCM4322 (14e4:432b) with same workaround as Catalina."

You would need to mount the Catalina drive in Read/Write mode to replace the kext in /S/L/E, to get around Catalina's security protocols. So try installing the kext to /L/E first.

I have attached the Mojave 10.14.6 O80211Family.kext for you to use.

 

[Edhawk]

If the Mojave IO80211Family.kext injection via OpenCore doesn't work with Big Sur, you may need to replace the WiFi card.

 

[buttadeus]

This is what I intend to do. Thank you for your time!

 

[imzaki1994]

got mine to work using the kext from here

GitHub - khronokernel/IO80211-Patches: Repo for patched IO80211Family Kexts

Repo for patched IO80211Family Kexts. Contribute to khronokernel/IO80211-Patches development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Patched Mojave Kext
Set MinKernel to 19.0.0

hope it helps you

 

[buttadeus]

Thank you very much! that kext did the job!