Monterey ASUS BT-400 (BCM20702A0) bluetooth dongle not working any more

[derelvis]

Machine Model

iMac11,1

Application Version

Latest Release

Application Variant

GUI (Graphical User Interface)

Have you verified whether this issue has been opened before? If no, your issue will be closed

true

Have you verified whether this issue is covered in our guide? ie. Troubleshooting and Legacy Acceleration pages

true

Is this issue with a 3rd party application?

false

What versions of macOS are you seeing the problem on?

macOS 12, Monterey

Where does this issue happen?

Within macOS (After Logging in)

What is the Issue?

First of all: many, many thanks for all the great work!!

I am using an ASUS BT-400 (BCM20702A0) bluetooth dongle for quite a while to connect mouse and keyboard to my 27" iMac11,1. This worked in Catalina and Big Sur but does not work any more since upgraded to Monterey. It still gets listed under USB devices but Bluetooth can not be turned on (disabled and greyed out).

I thought this patch might bring it back working but it did not: fa89865

Any Additional Information

• this is what I can see under USB-Devices
  

• and the buildin Bluetooth device is inactive - like it should
  

• and the output of "kmutil showloaded | grep Brcm" and "kmutil showloaded | grep Bluetooth"
  

I already did some tests with the BrcmPatchRAM as well (but not very familiar with it). If I copy BlueToolFixup.kext, BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext, BrcmPatchRAM3.kext into /Library/Extensions like described in the "Mac instructions" for BrcmPatchRAM the situation seems to change somehow. But does still not work (can't turn on bluetooth).

Regarding this post acidanthera/bugtracker#1669 (comment) I can see as well that there are at least these two not there anymore: CSRHIDTransitionDriver.kext, IOBluetoothUSBDFU.kext
But there is also a satement three posts below which states "The Bluetooth implementation in Monterey has changed significantly and no longer fits BrcmPatchRAM framework. It's not enough to just get firmware uploaded and inject a kextless driver for device ID matching."

Maybe it is just a "real mac" issue, because the hackintosh world seems to have a working BT-400 with Monterey 12.0.1
as can bee seen at acidanthera/bugtracker#1821.

If you need any more information or have instructions for me, please let me know. Many thanks in advance!

[protocold]

I have confirmed this to be an issue and my machine is MacBookPro8,2

You are correct that the hackintosh world have this working under Monterey.. I also wonder why this wont work with "real mac"

[khronokernel]

Not promising much with this build but see if this works:

• https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/suites/4945820926/artifacts/143338337
  • Must be signed into Github to download

This build simply forces BlueToolFixup regardless of detected hardware, as the internal BCM2046/BCM2070 may be taking over in macOS.

If this build works, please send the SPUSBDataType.txt generated:

system_profiler SPUSBDataType > ~/Desktop/SPUSBDataType.txt

[derelvis]

Thank you very much for taking care of this, @khronokernel. Appreciating your help. Thanks for joining @protocold.
I just tested your build but it seems to not have worked, sorry to say that :(
Only built and installed Open Core, did not reapply root patch as it only says available patches: Graphics Nvidia Kepler.

I created two logs, one before the test and one after applying the new build (order has changed when I compare them):
SPUSBDataType_before.txt
SPUSBDataType_after.txt

Any further advice or hint? Thanks again!

[protocold]

I forgot to ask you... did you edit the plist file in additional to adding BlueToolFixup.kext, BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext, BrcmPatchRAM3.kext into the EFI folder?

I am also confused of which kext we need to put and load, other than BlueToolFixup.kext. I tried to put BrcmFirmwareData.kext instead of BrcmFirmwareRepo.kext alongside with BrcmPatchRAM3.kext into the EFI folder and then edit the plist file to load them, but the sequence seems to matter as some combo will cause machine hang.

@khronokernel any idea on exactly which kext that we need for Monterey (and which order we should load it in the plist?

[derelvis]

@protocold No, I did not edit a plist. Which one did you change?

[protocold]

Of course the opencore config.plist

If I understand correctly, if we were to add new kext into the opencore, we need to edit config.plist to reflect that as well!

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/config.plist/

[derelvis]

Hm, I am confused. Does that mean you do not use the OpenCore Legacy Patcher but build your own OpenCore "setup" from that guide?
I thought it would be enough to put the kext files into /Library/Extensions like described here:
https://github.com/acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM/blob/master/README-Mac.md

[protocold]

that's not what i meant.

opencore legacy patcher (OCLP) is obviously based on opencore and it come as a set of pre-defined/tested configuration (OCLP's config.plist) and kext, alongside with many other extra cool stuff, for the "real mac".

Now our USB dongle is not part of "real mac", if we were to customize anything on top of OCLP, we should go into its config.plist and make the changes.

But having said that i suspect khronokernel's test build mentioned above already catered for this and the kext as well.

[khronokernel]

Validated with other users that some 3rd party Bluetooth 4.0 dongles seem to work with OCLP. With the mixed results and no local hardware for testing, going to consider this a "will not prioritize" as there are many other parts of OCLP I need to focus on.

Additionally parsing through Acidanthera's BlueTool issues as well as other forums, Hackintosh users still experience issues regardless. I would highly recommend troubleshooting on forums, and if you're able to resolve please PR. We always greatly appreciate additional aid with OCLP