Forgot to add the word BLUETOOTH to title lol. WiFi had been working for a while with no kexts, just a device rename.
I've been troubleshooting my Lenovo variant of this card (id 6414) for a few weeks now. I've had WiFi working since day 1, but Bluetooth had been dodgy.
If you read the BrcmPatchRAM docs, you'll learn that these cards have a firmware that is not hardcoded, but instead is uploaded each time the device is powered on (during a cold boot, or full shutdown). This is the same way in Windows and Linux.
There are many variants of this card, but they are all BCM94350ZAE under the hood, the difference is that the Bluetooth part of it changes ID, and takes different firmware depending on which one it is. So my lenovo takes a different firmware from a Dell, and so on.
The problem me and some other people were facing was that the firmware would fail to upload from Mac, or it would upload but not work (it would detect bluetooth, come on, pair, but connection would fail) unless booting from Windows or Linux first, letting it upload the firmware, and then rebooting (warm boot) into Mac.
Yesterday a user in a issue thread in Github for the BrcmPatchRAM compared how Linux does the upload of the firmware vs how this kext was doing it, and combined with some firmware version mismatches that another user found, we got to a point where I can personally say that my Lenovo card is fully functional.
This is good news because the 1560 is 55USD+, and the 1820A variants can be had for 15~25USD and are way more available.
Anyway, I know many wonder about this card, and I just wanted to share.
Here are the relevant threads if anyone wants to go over them:https://github.com/acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM/pull/4
https://github.com/acidanthera/bugtracker/issues/715
And the repo to build the new version:
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