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Rebranding Intel Centrino N6205 into AR5B95 and Fake PCI ID

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nouatzi

nouatzi

Joined
Jun 13, 2012
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Motherboard
ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-E Gaming
CPU
i5 8400
Graphics
UHD 630
Hi, in a Lenovo Thinkpad X230, I've installed macos sierra. I've replaced its Centrino N6205 wireless adapter with a spare Atheros AR5B95. I've finally rebranded the Atheros EEPROM into the Centrino, in order to bypass Lenovo whitelist.
Now, I'd like to use FakePCI ID to remap the PCI IDs back to the AR5B95.
First, I'm trying to patch my DSDT, according to https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Fake-PCI-ID.
But I don't know what to put here ??? :
Code: 
into method label _DSM parent_label ??? remove_entry;
into device label ??? parent_label EXP2 insert

Here are my ioreg and clover.
 

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nouatzi said:
Hi, in a Lenovo Thinkpad X230, I've installed macos sierra. I've replaced its Centrino N6205 wireless adapter with a spare Atheros AR5B95. I've finally rebranded the Atheros EEPROM into the Centrino, in order to bypass Lenovo whitelist.
Now, I'd like to use FakePCI ID to remap the PCI IDs back to the AR5B95.
First, I'm trying to patch my DSDT, according to https://github.com/RehabMan/OS-X-Fake-PCI-ID.
But I don't know what to put here ??? :
Code: 
into method label _DSM parent_label ??? remove_entry;
into device label ??? parent_label EXP2 insert

Here are my ioreg and clover.
Click to expand...

DSDT patch not involved. Refer to the example injector kext in the FakePCIID repo.
 
Ok, I didn't involved DSDT patch, build FakePCIID kext, and it worked. Thank you very much!
So, by curiosity, when DSDT patch should be use ?
 
Hi, does Atheros AR5B195 can be rebranded as intel centrino n6205
thanks
 
thanks RehabMan..
anyway, where I can find guide/tutorial for rebranding this wifi card.
thanks
 
RehabMan said:
I assume you rebranded an AR9280 as this Intel N6205?

If so, two places to modify the plist...
Under IOKitPersonalities, "AirPort AR9280 as AR946x", you find IONameMatch, and "pci168c,34".
Change it to match your ids: "pci8086,85"

And under IOKitPersonalities, "FakePCIID AR9280 as AR946x", you find IOPCIPrimaryMatch, and "0x0034168c 0x002a168c".
Change it to match your id: 0x00858086
Click to expand...

I tried to do the exact same thing for my Lenovo Thinkpad L530, (and the rebranding guide from Nouatzi helped a lot !)
My card is an AR9280 002a168c.
So my card is recognised as a centrino N6205 and my lap boots fine with it, I did exactly these modifications to the FakePciID injector kext, the wifi icon shows but it is unable to detect any Wifi network. Is there anything other to do than modifying the info.plist ? I tried to do a kext touch, rebooted several times, also tried to delete and add again the Wi-Fi in network properties... Any words of wisdom ? :)

EDIT : as Rehabman suggested on several other threads, I swapped my ssd for a ubuntu drive, used the fn key (f5 on my L530) for enabling/disabling wifi several times in linux, leaved it enabled and to my great surprise it works like a charm now that I am back in Sierra. I should precise that my rebranded card didn't work in linux but that wasn't a problem.

The other thing that might prove useful to anyone reading this is about the rebranding of the card itself.
While flashing with iwleeprom, it did nothing in spite of iwleeprom telling me that everything was working. PCI output was still showing my card as a 168c ! My searches on internet made me believe that my AR9280 EEPROM was OTP (one-time programmable thus with a kind of read-only EEPROM, apparently it happens sometimes with eBay/Amazon cards)

It wasn't the case, I finally tried something closer to this thread forked from Nouatzi's work : https://github.com/ThiagoSchetini/AR9285-rebranding
original topic by nouatzi : https://github.com/nouatzi/AR9285-rebrandinghttps://github.com/ThiagoSchetini/AR9285-rebranding

Thiago Schetini was modifying the ath9kio.c file around line 795 a bit more than Nouatzi that modified only the part starting with "if (dev->ops->eeprom_read16(dev, 128, &data)". I did as Thiago Schetini.
I tried modifying it with a sort_eeprom_size of 4096 instead of 512 as I believe Rehabman said he did in an other thread here on Tonymacx86. It worked with that, unlike before. I don't get that part at all, but if it helps anyone...

Anyway, thank you very much both Nouatzi and Rehabman for your precious help (and Rehabman also for 95% of the kexts/dsdt patches I used with my laptop) !! :clap::thumbup:
 
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