8 replies to this topic

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Hello, All.
I have a wifi card, a Linksys WMP300N. Its a PCI card, and worked great in Snow Leopard, recognized as Air Port and everything. But...

I just installed Lion to my Dell Optiplex 755, and discovered, as expected, that my wifi card no longer functioned. While in Snow Leopard, the card started functioning after I added a string to /System/Library/Extensions/IOO80211Family.kext/Contents/Plugins/AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext/Contents/Info.plist. However, in Lion, AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext does not exist. I tried copy-and-pasting my edited AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext from a Time Machiene backup to the proper location, but that did not work; while booting in Verbose mode, I saw an error flash by pointing to that kext: vtable malformed, link failed, failed to load executable, couldn't alloc class. I tried editing a similar file, AirPortBrcm4331.kext, in the same way by adding the same string that I added to 4311.kext, which did not work; while booting in Verbose mode, I saw the same kind of error flash by that I mentioned earlier, even after I deleted 4311.kext.

This computer does not have a wired connection at all, I am completely unable to run a wire to this computer. Wifi is its only means of accessing the net. Any suggestions?

[Noam AA]

i don't know if it will help but did you tried editing AppleAirPortBrcm43224.kext? maybe it will work.
another thing to try is to rollback all IOO80211Family.kext and not just the plugin

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I did also try 43224, identical error. How do I roll back? Just replace the IO80211Family.kext with the one from my Snow Leopard Time Machine backup?
And while I'm on the subject, how do I rebuild Extensions.mkext? The -f flag at Chameleon doesnt seem to work.

[Noam AA]

1. Yes, just don't forget to repair permissions...
2.

sudo kextcache -v 1 -a i386 -a x86_64 -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

and it seems lion handles caches little different then SL, -v will give you verbose and will process all kexts again. didn't check -f

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I've done what Noam suggested: replace IO80211Family.kext with my Snow Leopard one, and repaired permissions. The good news is, now I have a network adapter showing up in System Preferences. The bad news is, instead of AirPort, it shows up as Ethernet (en0) and won't connect to any networks.

UPDATE: In System Prefs, I turned en0 off and back on, just by using the "turn air port off/on" button. When I turned it back on, I connected to my network. Everything is working perfectly. It doesn't matter that the adapter shows up as Ethernet, it works perfectly as wireless, and I can always manually rename it to AirPort. Thank y'all for your help, and I'll make a new post if something explodes on my next reboot.

[zerojj]

i was able to get wmp300n to work w/ native 10.7.4 io80211family.kext


well, reporting success today after putting linksys WMP300N pci adapter into my hackpro:

Broadcom Corporation BCM4321 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4329] (rev 01)
FCC ID: Q87-WMP300N

With stock 10.7.4 IO80211Family.kext, did not detect, even after adding "pci14e4,4329" to /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAirPortBrcm43224.kext/Contents/Info.plist

I then did the prasys rebrand to subvid/subpid 0x106b/0x008c
Rebranding Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n Cards as AirPort Extreme | osxlatitude.com

After a reboot, lion is detecting native airport:

Software Versions:
  CoreWLAN: 2.1.2 (212.2)
  CoreWLANKit: 1.0.3 (103.2)
  Menu Extra: 7.1 (710.1)
  configd plug-in: 7.2.1 (721.3)
  System Profiler: 7.0 (700.3)
  IO80211 Family: 4.2 (420.3)
  WiFi Diagnostics: 1.0.2 (102)
  AirPort Utility: 6.1 (610.31)
  Interfaces:
en1:
  Card Type: AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0x8C)
  Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.36.15)
  MAC Address: 00:18:f8:xx:yy:zz
  Locale: FCC
  Country Code: US
  Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 b/g/n
  Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
  AirDrop: Supported
  Status: Connected
  Current Network Information:

Hooray - sleep works without hacks!

to recap:
1. add "pci14e4,4329" to /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAirPortBrcm43224.kext/Contents/Info.plist
2. rebrand to subvid/subpid 0x106b/0x008c


update:

I was able to rebrand the product pid to 4328, so that it was detected by native kext without needing any kext editing by using

this cmd:

ssb-sprom -i ssb_sprom_copy --subv 0x106b --subp 0x008b --ppid 0x4328 --regrev 0x0001 -o new_ssb_sprom_copy

I am still playing around with sub-pid. Unsure if 8b or 8c, or something else is the most optimal for this in terms of radio speeds and options. Welcome any feedback for which sub-pid seems to be working best for any of you

Edited by zerojj, 04 September 2012 - 05:39 PM.

[oSxFr33k]

@zerojj

Does it matter which product id you choose?  I chose 0x008b since that was the closest to my card.

PCI Card WMP300N
BCM4321 Rev 1 a/b/n
14e4:4329

I could not get this to work the first time because I put the ven/id in the wrong plist.  I added the id to the plist inside the kext 4331 instead of the 43224 by mistake.

Thanks for the link to that great guide, I can confirm that it works great in Mountain Lion!!

[zerojj]

update:

I was able to rebrand the product pid to 4328, so that it was detected by native kext without requiring kext mods:

used this cmd:

ssb-sprom -i ssb_sprom_copy --subv 0x106b --subp 0x008b --ppid 0x4328 --regrev 0x0001 -o new_ssb_sprom_copy

I am still playing around with sub-pid. Unsure if 8b or 8c, or something else is the most optimal for this in terms of radio speeds.

[el_charlie]

zerojj, on 29 August 2012 - 02:35 AM, said:

update:

I was able to rebrand the product pid to 4328, so that it was detected by native kext without requiring kext mods:

used this cmd:

ssb-sprom -i ssb_sprom_copy --subv 0x106b --subp 0x008b --ppid 0x4328 --regrev 0x0001 -o new_ssb_sprom_copy

I am still playing around with sub-pid. Unsure if 8b or 8c, or something else is the most optimal for this in terms of radio speeds.

Thanks for this!

I managed to rebrand my WMP300N and Airport is working but I can't detect any network!

What can I do?? I had to add an entry in my DSDT to show Airport. Maybe it's wrong.

Cheers!