Enabling an Atheros 3945 ABG card with a Thinkpad T61

[knightowl33]

Enabling an Atheros 3945 ABG card with a Thinkpad T61

 

After countless hours of looking for just such a guide on various forums and across the vastness of the Google index, I was finally able to piece together a working solution to enable the internal wireless of my T61 Stinkpad and wanted to share.

 

While there are several guides on this forum and others detailing an OSX install on similar hardware, I found the easiest and best install for a T61 to be simply using iATKOS 7. A lot less messing around and although I would have preferred to load up on SnowLeopard rather than Leopard 10.5.7, I couldn't get everything to work using the RETAIL method. One day all of the Kexts will be available and work for 10.6 but I couldn't find what I needed. Hence a very stable and workable 10.5.7. (FYI - You may want to AVOID the Apple 10.5.8 update which broke the video kext on mine).

 

That is ........ everything worked except the internal Intel ABG wireless card that the T61 shipped with. It appears that no amount of tinkering will get OSX to run this Intel card and I wasn't able to find a post that actually got it work. Maybe that's changed now as this was several weeks ago, so who knows.

 

The solution was to replace the internal Intel mini-PCIe card with an Atheros ABG card pulled from a dead Thinkpad. (Great quality Lenovo!" your top of the line system lasted 13 months!" just longer than your lousy warranty!)

 

You can buy the Atheros 3945 on ebay but you absolutely need to get one on Lenovo's white-list unless you want to rewrite the card's prom. Lenovo in their annoying and anti-trust wisdom, have prevented their systems from even booting with a non-white-listed internal card until you take the thing out! Rather than buy your $10 card from Lenovo for $120, you can usually find a Lenovo white-list one on eBay from the roaring trade in scrapped Lenovo laptops (they don't last long since IBM sold them off) or from a retailer in Hong Kong for around $20. Search for 'Thinkpad wireless Atheros', 'AR5BxB6', or by FRU, which could be '39t5578', '39t0499', or '40Y7026'. More details can be found in the following post from OutZider: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87574

 

The post suggests and I quote:

 

"To get your Atheros card working, pop into a terminal, and go to /System/Library/Extensions/IO802.11Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros.kext/Contents. Edit Info.plist with vi, nano, pico, or your editor or choice. Go down to IOPCIMatch, and under that, with all the <string> entries, add <string>pci168c,1014</string>. Save and exit, and manually load it by entering "kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IO802.11Family.kext" You'll be able to head into System Preferences, Network, and watch as it adds an AirPort option. Hit the 'Turn AirPort On' button, and you're in business."

 

However, using the iATKOS 7 installer as the basis of my build, I wasn't able to successfully edit the IO802.11Family.kext in the way described in OutZider's post. Or more accurately put, my edits did not achieve a working Wireless card or even the recognition of one by the OS.

 

Instead, and with great thanks to TheTimster's post here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=61260, I downloaded the Airport Extreme Update 2007-004, then backed up and replaced my entire IO802.11Family.kext.

 

"Steps required to install the IO80211Family.kext.zip file originally posted by TheTimster and Kizwan:-

1) Unzip the file at Desktop (for example) and you should get IO80211Family.kext folder

 

2) Make backup for your existing IO80211Family.kext folder (/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext) to safe location.

-- Run this in terminal:

$ sudo -s

$ mkdir /BackupExt

$ cp -R /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext /BackupExt/

 

3) Now you have your original kext file in /BackupExt folder. This useful if you have problem later.

 

4) Now you have to copy the IO80211Family.kext folder from Desktop to original location

$ cp -R /Users/<your login id>/Desktop/IO80211Family.kext /System/Library/Extensions/

 

5) Remove kextcache file, so OS X will rebuild it at reboot.

$ rm -r /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache

$ rm -r /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

 

6) Fix permission

$ diskutil repairPermissions /

 

7) Reboot

 

If you get a kernel panic after reboot, boot with your installation DVD and use Terminal program to restore the original KEXT file from backup. Your partition should mount in /Volumes folder, if I'm not mistaken."

 

If you receive a permissions issue you may need to manually set these with the following commands:

 

chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext

chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext

 

 

 

The final stage of the configuration is to modify the info.plist file inside of the AirPortAtheros.kext file as detailed in OutZider's post.

 

Go to /System/Library/Extensions/IO802.11Family.kext/

 

Then Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros.kext/Contents.

 

Edit Info.plist with vi, nano, pico, or your editor or choice.

 

Go down to IONameMatch, and under that, with all the <string> entries, add the Ven ID and Dev ID for your card as such following:

 

<string>pci168c,1014</string>.

 

[in my case it was Ven ID=pci168, Dev ID=1014. You can find this by looking at the card in a Windows machine under Device Manager / Properties / Details]

 

Save and exit, and reboot or manually load it by entering the following in a Terminal window

 

"kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IO802.11Family.kext"

 

You'll be able to head into System Preferences, Network, and watch as it adds an AirPort option. Hit the 'Turn AirPort On' button, and you're in business. You should see the airport wireless fan at the top of your screen and go from there to join the wireless network of your choice.

[mywaycn]

Hi Knightowl33

 

My Atheros wireless card is Atheros AR5BXB6 MINI PCI-E 5424 FRU:39T5578

 

Follow your instruction, i can't load it, here is the detail:: please help

 

Steven-ZY-OUmatoMacBook-Pro:~ root# kextutil -il /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext

Warnings:

Executable does not contain code for architecture:

x86_64

The booter does not recognize symbolic links; confirm these files/directories aren't needed for startup:

/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/CodeDirectory

/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/CodeRequirements

/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/CodeResources

/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/CodeSignature

 

/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext appears to be loadable (not including linkage for on-disk libraries).

Load /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext and its dependencies into the kernel [Y/n]? y

Loading /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext.

Can't load /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext - no code for running kernel's architecture.

Failed to load /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext - (libkern/kext) requested architecture/executable not found.

Failed to load /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext - (libkern/kext) requested architecture/executable not found.