###BrcmPatchRAM -- RehabMan fork
This version (v1.7) of BrcmPatchRAM has a fix for a problem I noticed on my Lenovo u430.
Description of the problem: Intermittently, bluetooth would not be available after a sleep/wake cycle. The problem turns out that sometimes Yosemite doesn't "tear down" and "reconstruct" the USB (either EHC or XHC) ioreg tree after wake. This results in the instance of BrcmPatchRAM that was resident prior to sleep to remain resident and attached to the bluetooth device. This means no call to ::probe will be made and thus no firmware loaded into the device. The problem was observed intermittently, approx. 1 of 25 wakes.
The fix: Since the device has no firmware and no reprobe will be happening in that case, we need to load firmware after the wake notification is received but not before we know that a re-probe is not going to occur. By intrumenting ::stop, it was determined that, in normal cases, the device is reconstructed (thus old instance gets ::stop, new instance gets ::probe) within approx 100-200ms. The solution, then, is to create a timer on wake and should the timer expire (before ::stop is called), spin up a thread to load firmware. The timer used currently is 400ms. The longest time between wake and reprobe (non failure case) was 214ms.
I mention the specific timing as I don't believe the code will deal gracefully if a USB teardown happens in the middle of firmware uploading. I will look at improving the robustness in the (near) future. This version has been tested on my u430 over many sleep/wake cycles without issue. No instances of failed bluetooth after sleep, and no crashes caused by the firmware uploader thread.
Builds are available on bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/RehabMan/os-x-brcmpatchram/downloads
###BrcmPatchRAM
Note if you have an Apple MacBook/iMac/Mac Pro etc, follow the Mac instructions
Most Broadcom USB Bluetooth devices make use of a system called RAMUSB.
RAMUSB allows the firmware for the device to be updated on-the-fly, however any updates previously applied are lost when shutting down the machine.
The Broadcom Windows driver will upload firmware into the Broadcom Bluetooth device on every startup, however for OS X this functionality is not supported out of the box.
BrcmPatchRAM kext is an OS X driver which applies PatchRAM updates for Broadcom RAMUSB based devices.
It will apply the firmware update to your Broadcom Bluetooth device on every startup / wakeup, identical to the Windows drivers.
The firmware applied is extracted from the Windows drivers and the functionality should be equal to Windows.
Note that the original Apple Broadcom bluetooth devices are not RAMUSB devices, and thus do not have the same firmware mechanism.
####Supported Devices
BrcmPatchRAM supports any Broadcom USB bluetooth device based on the BCM20702 chipset (possibly other chipsets are supported also, but this has not been tested).
The following devices are supported at the moment:
Devices marked with * are tested successfully
[0489:e032]20702 Combo USB[0489:e042]20702A1 Lenovo China *[0489:e079]Lenovo China 43162 NGFF[0489:e07a]Lenovo NGFF (4352 / 20702)[04ca:2003]20702A1 Lenovo China[04ca:200a]LiteOn (4352 Combo)[04ca:200b]LiteOn (4352 Combo) *[04ca:200c]LiteOn (4352 Combo)[04ca:200f]Acer / LiteOn (4352 Combo)[050d:065a]Belkin (20702)[0930:0221]Toshiba (4352 / 20702)[0930:0223]Toshiba NGFF (4352 / 20702) *[0a5c:216b]HP Rapture 4352Z NGFF Combo[0a5c:216e]HP Blackbird 43162 NGFF[0a5c:216f]Dell DW1560 (4352/20702)[0a5c:21de]4352/20702A1 combo[0a5c:21e1]HP Softsailing (20702A1)[0a5c:21e6]non-UHE Lenovo Bluetooth (20702)[0a5c:21e8]Bluetooth USB Dongle (20702A1) *[0a5c:21ec]Inateck Bluetooth (20702A1)[0a5c:21fb]HP Supra 4352 (20702A1 Combo)[0a5c:21fd]Broadcom 4352Z[0a5c:22be]Broadcom BCM20702 Bluetooth 4.0 USB Device[0b05:17cb]Asus BT-400 (20702 stand-alone) *[0b05:17cf]Asus (4352/20702A1 combo) *[0b05:180a]Azurewave (4360/20702 combo)[13d3:3404]Azurewave (4352HMB) *[13d3:3411]Dell Alienware (4352/20702A1 combo) *[13d3:3413]Azurewave (4360/20702 combo)[13d3:3418]Azurewave (4352/20702 combo)[13d3:3435]Azurewave (4352/20702 combo)[13d3:3456]Azurewave (4352/20702 combo)[413c:8143]Dell DW1550 (4352/20702 combo)
####Installation
BrcmPatchRAM can be installed either through Clover kext injection or placed in /System/Library/Extensions for legacy installations.
####Details
BrcmPatchRAM consists of 3 parts:
- BrcmPatchRAM itself communicates with supported Broadcom Bluetooth USB devices (as configured in the Info.plist), and detects if they require a firmware update.
If a firmware update is required, the matching firmware data will be uploaded to the device and the device will be reset.
-
BrcmFirmwareStore is a shared resource which holds all the configured firmwares for different Broadcom Bluetooth USB devices.
Some devices require device specific firmware, while others can use the newest version available in the Windows drivers without issue.
New firmwares are added/configured on a regular basis to support devices, so be sure to follow release updates, or log an issue if you find your device is not supported.
Firmwares can be stored using zlib compression in order to keep the configuration size manageable.
After the device firmware is uploaded, the device control is handed over to Apple's BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport. This means that for all intents and purposes your device will be native on OS X and support all functionalities fully.
It is possible to use the Continuity Activation Patch in combination with BrcmPatchRAM through Clover or through dokterdok's script: https://github.com/dokterdok/Continuity-Activation-Tool
Clover users can make use of the following kext patch:
<dict>
<key>Comment</key>
<string>IOBluetoothFamily - Continuity & Hand-off</string>
<key>Find</key>
<data>i4eMAQAA</data>
<key>Name</key>
<string>IOBluetoothFamily</string>
<key>Replace</key>
<data>uA8AAACQ</data>
</dict>####Troubleshooting
After installing BrcmPatchRAM, even though your Bluetooth icon may show up, it could be that the firmware has not been properly updated.
Verify the firmware is updated by going to System Information and check the Bluetooth firmware version number under the Bluetooth information panel.
If the version number is "4096", this means no firmware was updated for your device and it will not work properly.
Verify any errors in the system log by running the following command in the terminal:
cat /var/log/system.log | grep -i brcm[fp]Ensure you check only the latest boot messages, as the system.log might go back several days.
If the firmware upload failed with an error, try installing the debug version of BrcmPatchRAM in order to get more detailed information in the log.
In order to report an error log an issue on github with the following information:
- Device product ID
- Device vendor ID
- BrcmPatchRAM version used
- Dump of BrcmPatchRAM debug output from /var/log/system.log showing the firmware upload failure
####Firmware Compatibility
Some USB devices are very firmware specific and trying to upload any other firmware for the same chipset into them will fail.
This usually displays in the system log as:
BrcmPatchRAM: Version 0.5 starting.
BrcmPatchRAM: USB [0a5c:21e8 5CF3706267E9 v274] "BCM20702A0" by "Broadcom Corp"
BrcmFirmwareStore: Retrieved firmware for firmware key "BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1612_v5708".
BrcmFirmwareStore: Decompressed firmware (29714 bytes --> 70016 bytes).
BrcmPatchRAM: device request failed (0xe000404f).
BrcmPatchRAM: Failed to reset the device (0xe00002d5).
BrcmPatchRAM: Unable to get device status (0xe000404f).
BrcmPatchRAM: Firmware upgrade completed successfully.
The errors in between mean the firmware was not uploaded successfully, and the device will most likely need a specific firmware configured.
For other devices the newest firmware available (even though not specified specifically in the Windows drivers) works fine.
In order to support a new device, the firmware for the device needs to be extracted from existing Windows drivers.
A copy of the (current) latest Broadcom USB bluetooth drivers can be found here: http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/BLUETOOTH/Broadcom/ASUS-X99-DELUXE-Broadcom-Bluetooth-Driver-6515800-12009860.shtml#download
Should you come across newer drivers than 12.0.0.9860, please let me know.
In order to get the device specific firmware for your device take the following steps:
-
Look up your USB device vendor and product ID, in this example we will be using the BCM94352Z PCI NGFF WiFi/BT combo card, for which the vendor is 0930 and product ID 0233.
-
Extract the Windows Bluetooth driver package and open the bcbtums-win8x64-brcm.inf file.
-
Find your vendor / device ID combination in the .inf file
%BRCM20702.DeviceDesc%=BlueRAMUSB0223, USB\VID_0930&PID_0223 ; 20702A1 Toshiba 4352- Locate the mentioned "RAMUSB0223" device in the .inf file:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;RAMUSB0223;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
[RAMUSB0223.CopyList]
bcbtums.sys
btwampfl.sys
BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.hex-
Copy the firmware hex file matching your device from the Windows package, in this case "BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.hex"
-
The firmware file can now optionally be compressed using the included zlib.pl script:
zlib.pl deflate BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.hex > BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.zhx- After this a hex dump can be created for pasting into a plist editor:
xxd -ps BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.zhx > BCM20702A1_001.002.014.1443.1457.dmp- Using a plist editor create a new firmware key under the BcmFirmwareStore/Firmwares dictionary.
Note that the version number displayed in OS X is the last number in the file name (1457 in our sample) + 4096.
So in this case the firmware version in OS X would be: "c14 v5553".
- After configuring a key under BcmFirmwareStore/Firmwares, add your device ID as a new device for BrcmPatchRAM.
Copying an existing IOKit personality and modifying its properties is the easiest way to do this. Configure the earlier firmware using its unique firmware key.