Unable to pair Bluetooth Keyboard - GA-H87N-WIFI

[archbishop]

I just finished my install of a new system, based off the current CustoMac Mini Buyer's guide using:

GA-H87N-WIFI
i3-4330

I was able to successfully install 10.9.2, but now I can't seem to get my apple keyboard to pair with the built-in bluetooth card.

When the computer first starts up, the Bluetooth menu item has a strike through it and simply says "Bluetooth: Not Available". Sometimes, if I let it sit for 30 seconds or so the strikethrough disappears. If it doesn't disappear, I trash com.apple.Bluetooth.plist, use DPCIManager to rebuild cache, and restart. Sometimes the next boot's bluetooth is active after 30 seconds, sometimes not.

If Bluetooth is active, I go to the Bluetooth Preferences and click the power button on the keyboard. Immediately, I get a pairing request popup for a "peripheral", but any key presses I make aren't recognized by the computer. If I cancel the pairing and hit the keyboard's power button again it pop's up another pairing request, but this time for "archbishop's keyboard" but still key presses aren't recognized by the computer. If I repeatedly cancel and retry to pair the key presses are usually recognized eventually and I am able to pair and use the keyboard. But I get wiped back to square one, if I restart.

I find all of this perplexing, especially the inconsistency of the responses. Can anyone offer any help or insight into what could be causing this?

Thanks

n.b. I am using the antenna that was included with the MB and setting less than 5 feet from computer as I try this.

 

[lyons238]

have you solved this problem? if so can you pm me? I'm having the same issue.

 

[itwas]

I just finished my install of a new system, based off the current CustoMac Mini Buyer's guide using:

GA-H87N-WIFI
i3-4330

I was able to successfully install 10.9.2, but now I can't seem to get my apple keyboard to pair with the built-in bluetooth card.

When the computer first starts up, the Bluetooth menu item has a strike through it and simply says "Bluetooth: Not Available". Sometimes, if I let it sit for 30 seconds or so the strikethrough disappears. If it doesn't disappear, I trash com.apple.Bluetooth.plist, use DPCIManager to rebuild cache, and restart. Sometimes the next boot's bluetooth is active after 30 seconds, sometimes not.

If Bluetooth is active, I go to the Bluetooth Preferences and click the power button on the keyboard. Immediately, I get a pairing request popup for a "peripheral", but any key presses I make aren't recognized by the computer. If I cancel the pairing and hit the keyboard's power button again it pop's up another pairing request, but this time for "archbishop's keyboard" but still key presses aren't recognized by the computer. If I repeatedly cancel and retry to pair the key presses are usually recognized eventually and I am able to pair and use the keyboard. But I get wiped back to square one, if I restart.

I find all of this perplexing, especially the inconsistency of the responses. Can anyone offer any help or insight into what could be causing this?

Thanks

n.b. I am using the antenna that was included with the MB and setting less than 5 feet from computer as I try this.

buy the boardcom chipset USB bluetooth dongle, don't waste the time with the onboard intel WiFi/BT, it won't works

 

[PBuerk]

Same problem here, using a 4670k. I've even wiped out the install and started over just to get Bluetooth working, and still the same problem. Looking through previous posts, checked the BIOS settings, but sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't. When it does, it's great, but there's no guarantee that it will come back the next time I boot up.

 

[PBuerk]

I've got things working, but in a very roundabout way. That's the good news, at least for me. Hopefully this helps others who have this same board.

I gave up using the Bluetooth/Wifi card that's installed on the board, disconnecting it and moving it out of the way in case I want to use it later. Looking back, that may not have been necessary, but since everything's working now, I'm not going to change it back to the standard config. I figured $20 tops for a USB dongle was worth more than my time to dink around with it. All I know is that it had worked intermittently, but wasn't reliable enough in the configuration it was in.

I picked up a Kensington USB dongle at Fry's. It wasn't on the Buyer's Guide, but I'd had good luck with other Kensington products with OSX, and the suggested ones were not on the rack. Got home, plugged it in, and no success, although it was showing that it's at least recognized by the computer. Did some research online and found that this was a CSR8510 A10 based device, and as such was known to work with OSX. Some other users had to use the CSR BlueTest3 suite, specifically the PSTool to get the dongle to work, so I ran that on my Windows 7 laptop and found that it was already set to go. In any event, that didn't get things working and I wasn't able to connect to my trackpad. The System Profiler report showed the dongle in place and bluetooth running, but not connectible or discoverable.

The next step was to look at modifying the info.plist preferences files in the IOBluetoothFamily.kext. When I opened those up, I could see that there was a CSR plugin, but there was no plist inside. The only plist in that whole kext was under a different plugin (IOBluetoothUSBDFU.kext), and it wasn't the Broadcomm one either. After trying some editing by hand on the plist files and getting to know some Kext utilities, I gave up on it for the night. The most I could get it to do was to show as running but not connectible or discoverable.

This morning, it occurred to me to look at the kext's on my iMac. It originally came with Snow Leopard, upgraded over time to Mavericks. Sure enough, there were CSR plists in both IOBluetoothFamily.kext and IOBluetoothHIDDriver.kext. Copied both of those from the iMac onto a USB drive, put them on the desktop on the target computer, backed up the kext's on the target computer, then let the kext wizard copy and fix permissions. After deleting the Bluetooth preferences and rebooting, the System Profiler report showed that it was connectible and discoverable, and found a couple other computers in the house. Still couldn't find the trackpad.

Ended up doing a "reset" on the trackpad by taking the batteries out and immediately putting them back in. Pressed the button, and the target computer found them within seconds. After that, I set my personal preferences for the trackpad, did a reboot, and saw that everything was still working. Keeping my fingers crossed, but also keeping a USB mouse at the ready in case it throws up on itself. My guess is that since the trackpad had connected to the old bluetooth card on the motherboard, that may have kept it from connecting and pairing with the Kensington dongle.

So, what's the point of this TLDR post? In my opinion, the problem wasn't necessarily the hardware, but most likely the kext's that shipped with Mavericks. Since I had the CSR kext's from SL/Lion/ML on the iMac and had upgraded it to Mavericks, they were probably left "as is". I don't know enough about MultiBeast to say if it had any impact on this, but my guess is that it didn't. I will admit that I was a little pissed off about having to do this with components that were in the Buyer's Guide, but it looks like the kexts were the issue.

 

[ForbiddenEra]

I know this is kind of an old thread but I'm having a similar issue with the same BT chip on a real Mac Pro 1,1->2,1. Devices show up but I can't pair my Apple KB.. Haven't tried to pair anything else, I'm on Mavericks and am thinking my kext may be missing stuff as yours was.. Can you give more details / provide the kext you modified? thanks