MBP 1,1-10,2 Lost Wifi card after trying to update Chromium Legacy

[philgxxd]

Hi community.

I was trying to update my Chromium Legacy install through the downloader from our honourable member @Wowfunhappy i had running very well since a year on my 2010 15"MBP with 10.9 (of course!).
I couldn't get it to update past version 111.xxx... and restarted quite a bit.
I have installed a upgrade wifi card from a 2012 iMac and had it running as mentioned for a year. It's a Broadcom BCM94331PCIEBT4CAX.
After a restart i had no wifi card installed anymore and was greeted with an annoying new wifi icon in the menu bar saying that there is no hardware installed.
I have an dual install with Mavericks/Monterey on this Mac so i quickly rebooted into Monterey and was relieved to see that the wifi card was still working there so i instantly thought in a problem with a modded kext that i maybe used to get the card working in Mavericks.
I can't remember if or what i did...i tried searching here and on other places but could only find other people mentioning this card with trying to get Handoff and Continuity working in 10.10 Yosemite and upwards.
I would need some hints as how i can approach to get back a working kext for 10.9 Mavericks.
Can i just borrow a kext from a Yosemite install and drop into place in Mavericks and have it working?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

The Chromium Legacy PrefPane does install a kernel extension on 10.9 (assuming you said OK when prompted) in order to patch an Apple bug that causes kernel panics when Chromium Legacy is in use. However, I highly doubt that is what's breaking Bluetooth.

As part of the install process, however, the PrefPane clears the kernel cache. This is necessary any time you install a driver / kernel extension in order for the new kernel extension to take effect. So my guess is that whatever you did to get wifi working at some point in the past was already no longer installed, but it appeared to be working because the kernel extension was cached.

In other words, I think you did the following:

1. You installed a kernel extension to get your Bluetooth card working on Mavericks.
2. You uninstalled or otherwise broke whatever you did in step 1. However, because the fix was cached, you didn't notice.
3. The Chromium Legacy PrefPane cleared the kernel cache in order to install its own kext. Causing whatever you did in #2 to actually become noticeable.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with your specific wifi card, but if you had it working before it should be possible to do whatever that was again...

 

[philgxxd]

Finally a follow-up!

This problem got resolved after reinstalling OSX 10.9 Mavericks.
At first boot i still saw the crossed-out Wifi icon but it was just saying Wifi "not configured" instead of "hardware not present" so i just hopped into network settings and added the Wifi again.
Great @Wowfunhappy. Thanks for the support!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Glad you got it working! I do wonder what actually happened.