<< Solved >> Problem with I211AT in Big Sur with Opencore

[ak1]

I am looking for some hints or advice for solving or troubleshooting this:

I am running Big Sur 11.2 with Opencore 0.6.6. on an Asrock H370m. Almost all is fine so far. It has two onboard NICs.
The first one is a I219V7 and it works with IntelMausi.kext without any issues.

The second one is also Intel: I211AT. It is supposed to work with SmallTreeIntel82576.kext (1.3.0). But unfortunately, no matter what I do, the NIC does not show up in Big Sur at all. Connected to a switch LEDs show a data link and traffic.
I checked with Ubuntu as well, and the I211AT is actually working.
PCI information from lspci in Ubuntu:
Vendor: Intel Corporation [8086]
Device: I211 Gigabit Network Connection [1539]
SVendor: ASRock Incorporation [1849]
SDevice: I211 Gigabit Network Connection [1539]
Rev: 03

Any ideas or suggestions to get this thing working are highly appreciated!

 

[Edhawk]

1. Have you checked that the SmallTreesIntel kext is listed and Enabled in the Kernel section of your config.plist?
2. Have you checked that the SmallTreesIntel kext you are using contains the device id (0x15398086) for your I211AT controller?
3. Have you checked to see if the I211AT device is showing in the System Preferences > Network pane?
4. You may need to manually add the Ethernet2 device to get it to work.

I have attached the SmallTree-Intel-211-AT-PCIe-GBE.kext below. Try this kext in place of your current one, see if it makes any difference.

Remember to run a Clean Snapshot in ProperTree to update you /OC/config.plist. You should do this every time you add or remove a kext, SSDT, driver or tool from one of the OC sub-folders.

 

[ak1]

Thanks for your response.

1. Yes. But I used PlistEditPro to make sure it's there and enabled.
2. Yes, just verified again:

            <key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>
            <string>0x15218086 0x15228086 0x15398086</string>

Also tried your version of the kext (which is v 1.0.6 compared to 1.3.0 I had before).
3. It's not showing up in the system preferences. Also in in the "system report/ethernet cards"* only the other NIC shows up.
*Not quite sure whether this is the English name, since I have a different language active. Apple->About this Mac->Hardware->Ethernet cards
4. Manually added Ethernet 2 and rebooted. Does not make a difference.

Yes. Just tried it that way. Doing a clean snapshot with current version of ProperTree. Unfortunately, doesn't solve the problem. I have to admit, before I only made sure that the new kext is integrated and activated using PlistEditPro or using OpenCore Configurator.

I am somewhat lost now ...

 

[Edhawk]

Can you check in your Bios that the I211AT controller is enabled. This is the only thing I can think that might prevent the controller from working in macOS.

This is the ASRock H370M-ITX/ac board linked here, yes? - https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H370M-ITXac/index.us.asp#Specification

 

[ak1]

I found the issue and solved it. Was not caused by OpenCore, the kext, Big Sur, ...
Looking at my screenshots from my Ubuntu test, I realized that both NICs had the same MAC address which should not be the case.
Seems something went wrong in a previous mainboard bios update.
I found this post in the Asrock forum: 2 NICs same MAC
With that instruction, the MAC patching tool, a DOS USB thumbdrive, ... I was able to write the correct MAC addresses.
Now everything is working fine.

Thanks for your support!

 

[Edhawk]

You are welcome.