AR5B97 with Mojave

[nijhawank]

So after failing to make AR5BHB112 work with macOS (its claimed to be unsupported at many places over the internet, but I had mistakenly ordered one), I now want to bring AR5B97 to life.

 

The reasons for using Atheros cards is not that they are cheap but my machine is aimed to be a dual boot machine with windows 10 also on it and I want a card that works well with windows and macOS both, plus my machine requires a half-size mini pci-e. So my options are pretty limited. So here I'm with AR5B97 which is working in Windows/Linux and my adventure in macOS starts.

 

I'm aware that this particular card is not supported OOB but I need to declare compatibility with an OOB card + bring the kexts from High Sierra.

So this is what I did...

1. Added the _DSM method to Device(EXP2) in DSDT...

            Device (EXP2)
            {
                Name (_ADR, 0x001C0001)  // _ADR: Address
                Name (RID, 0x00)
                OperationRegion (PECS, PCI_Config, 0x00, 0x0100)
                Field (PECS, DWordAcc, NoLock, Preserve)
                {
                    Offset (0x62), 
                    PS,     1, 
                    PP,     1, 
                    Offset (0xDB), 
                        ,   7, 
                    PMCE,   1, 
                    Offset (0xDF), 
                        ,   7, 
                    PMCS,   1
                }

                Name (_PRW, Package (0x02)  // _PRW: Power Resources for Wake
                {
                    0x09, 
                    0x04
                })
                Name (LPRT, Package (0x04)
                {
                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x00, 
                        \_SB.LNKB, 
                        0x00
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x01, 
                        \_SB.LNKC, 
                        0x00
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x02, 
                        \_SB.LNKD, 
                        0x00
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x03, 
                        \_SB.LNKA, 
                        0x00
                    }
                })
                Name (APRT, Package (0x04)
                {
                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x00, 
                        0x00, 
                        0x11
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x01, 
                        0x00, 
                        0x12
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x02, 
                        0x00, 
                        0x13
                    }, 

                    Package (0x04)
                    {
                        0xFFFF, 
                        0x03, 
                        0x00, 
                        0x10
                    }
                })
                Method (_PRT, 0, NotSerialized)  // _PRT: PCI Routing Table
                {
                    If (\GPIC)
                    {
                        Return (APRT)
                    }
                    Else
                    {
                        Return (LPRT)
                    }
                }

                Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)  // _DSM: Device-Specific Method
                {
                    Store (Package (0x0C)
                        {
                            "model", 
                            Buffer (0x1E)
                            {
                                "Atheros AR5B97 b/g/n Wireless"
                            }, 

                            "device_type", 
                            Buffer (0x08)
                            {
                                "AirPort"
                            }, 

                            "built-in", 
                            Buffer (One)
                            {
                                 0x00                                           
                            }, 

                            "name", 
                            Buffer (0x10)
                            {
                                "AirPort Extreme"
                            }, 

                            "AAPL,slot-name", 
                            Buffer (0x09)
                            {
                                "Internal"
                            }, 

                            "compatible", 
                            Buffer (0x0B)
                            {
                                "pci168c,30"
                            }
                        }, Local0)
                    DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                    Return (Local0)
                }
            }

2. Already have HS Kexts in /Library/Extensions from my previous adventure with AR5BHB112

 

But macOS says no wifi hardware. Please find attached the screenshots of IORegistryExplorer. Is my DSDT modification to add _DSM is correct?

 

 

 

 

 

[nijhawank]

I thought so, thanks Herve. Will try tonight. 

[nijhawank]

Worked perfect. Thanks Herve.