MP 1,1-5,1 No more BT

I have a Mac Pro 4,1, upgraded to 5,1 and with a Saphire RX 580 card ran Mojave for some years without issue. I later replaced the original BT and WiFi cards with a newer combined one (BCM94360CS) from a MacBook Pro and had Handoff, Watch unlock etc working fine.

Finally decided to use OCLP to update to Monterey and put all that on a 500 GB NVMe stick on a Lycom PCIe card. Everything worked.

Recently decided to replace the 500 GB NVMe with a 1 TB. This was a Sabrent M.2 stick (recommended as fully working in Macs) and also swapped out the Lycom PCIe for a Sabrent one, so I would have a complete spare NVMe/PCIe solution.

Used OCLP 2.4.1 to orchestrate a fresh install of Monterey 12.7.4 (latest installer available) on the new 1 TB NVMe drive, followed by a migration from the old NVMe to copy the users.

Taken a while, but all up and running with Apple USB keyboard and mouse. However tried to connect a BT Magic Mouse and realised there is NO BT. Cannot switch it on and System Information/Hardware/Bluetooth just comes up blank. Literally. Spinning progress wheel but just blank.

Where's Bluetooth gone?

It occurs to me that maybe some drivers/kexts were previously required to enable this BT/WiFi module, but OCLP doesn't know this as it just builds for a Mac 5,1. Or is that just a fanciful memory and I had to do no such thing. I cannot now remember. 🤬

I checked OCLP's root patches but it says nothing is required.

So I'm a bit stumped as to why I have no BT when previously this Mac, ran Monterey via OCLP with no such lack. The only changes are a larger NVMe on a different PCIe card and OS version is now 12.7.4 instead of 12.6.? There's nothing that jumps out as causing this issue, unless I have missed some driver and/or kext.

Anyone any clues abut this?

Except it's not a dongle I'm using. Or anything third party. It's an Apple BT/WiFi card, just not one originally supplied in a Mac Pro 5,1.

Also, this Mac ran absolutely perfectly with this exact card - for years.

Just rebooted (5 times with OCPR to clear NVRAM) and although System Information is showing the hardware, I cannot turn it on.

reader50 said:

If your system is finally seeing the card, does OCLP offer any new root patches?

Click to expand...

After sleeping overnight (I mean the Mac ), System information no longer sees the hardware. I'll try rebooting.

tsialex said:

Apple deprecated and started removing support for the ancient MacPro5,1 OHCI USB controllers since Big Sur, each subsequent release is worse for anything that is connected via USB.

If you install a USB 2.0 hub (EHCI) between the D+ and D- of the BT card and the USB connection on the backplane you'll overcome the missing OHCI support, since EHCI is still supported.

Click to expand...

So, to clarify, originally there were OHCI and EHCI drivers to provide USB 1 and USB 2 compatibility, but OHCI is steadily being dropped. Is the BCM94360CS OHCI only?

Thing is though @tsialex, I ran this same Mac Pro and Monterey (albeit 12.6, now 12.7 and with smaller NVMe on different PCIe card) for years and no such problem with the BT/WiFi card. I somehow doubt the NVMe change is connected, but have drivers been removed between 12.6 and 12.7? Seems unlikely, but possible I guess. It's Apple.

Truth is, I have no need of WiFi. Is there a later BT only card I could use instead?

There is another difference I realise. I originally used OCLP 0.6.1 whereas now for the larger NVMe I'm using OCLP 2.4.1. So it is possible OCLP is now creating/allowing this problem.

Aha! The problem is OCLP 2.4.1. No idea exactly what though.

With the new NVMe drive still in place, I put the old stick (Monterey 12.6.?) in a USB case and connected to the Mac Pro. Tried to see differences in EFi setup, but not obvious to me.

However, in one of the MP's built-in USB front ports, the old drive then shows up as a boot device, so I restarted and held the Option key.

The boot menu shows 2 indistinguishable EFi boot options. I picked the one next to old drive and booted from that. Disappointingly it actually booted into 12.7.4, so from the new drive. However, an OCLP message then announced it was using an old version and a newer one is available, so it had actually booted from the old drive's OCLP EFI, but loaded the OS from the new drive. I guess the EFI config points to an internal NVMe drive. But…

The importance of this is that Bluetooth is working perfectly.

So same OS, same hardware but different OCLP version means BT working or not.

At least I now know where the problem lies, but what has OCLP 2.4.1 got wrong and who can I ask?

I downgraded to 2.3.2 and BT is working. 😆

So 2.4.1 (probably 2.4.0) has broken something.

I'd file a bug report on github, but not allowed which seems a daft restriction. How do they expect to find out about problems.