How goes the progress with this? Need a tester?
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Not good at all. I have literally spent hours the past couple of weeks working on it. If I had anything useful, I'd gladly upload for further testing. (My Aquantia port is still great.)
I've tried such various approaches such as using FakePCIID to get SmallTree to work or to go directly to the AppleIntelI210Ethernet kext (a I210 relative of the I211). (And I spent some time reading old Rehabman posts and threads concerning ethernet, so I could optimize FakePCIID for this task.)
I've tried creating various patches for IONetworkingFamily, SmallTree, AppleIntelI210Ethernet (to boot directly) kexts. I also tried custom SSDTs to fake an I210 device-id, along with trying injection of accurate or fake device-id through DevProperties inside OC.
In addition, I've used a decompiler in both SmallTree, IONetworkingFamily and AppleIntelI210Ethernet, studying the code for likely areas to patch.
In fact, before attempting to use the decompiler on these files, in order to better understand how this approach works, I did some research. I used the decompiler to reconstruct how Mieze reverse-engineered the Aquantia kext file and created a working patch (I wrote about this process on another forum:
here for those interested). Then I used this same approach on the SmallTree kext. After creating some patches, there was no activation of the I211 port. I've also tried various combinations of these patches. Still no activation. Frustrating.
[To be more precise, I created patches for IONetworkingFamily and AppleIntelI210Ethernet; for SmallTree, I used Hex Fiend to patch SmallTree directly based on what I found in the de-compiler. If this would have been successful, then a new, stand-alone SmallTree kext would have been created without the need for patches.]
Similarly, if FakePCIID is used, I can get the following as shown in the attached image: but still no active connection (as if 'unplugged' again; same as I showed in my earlier post in this thread). And with FakePCIID, I've tested for both accurate and faked device-ids (and again, in both SmallTree and AppleIntelI210Ethernet).
I'll try a few more things this weekend. I still feel that it's something simple I'm overlooking (but it'll probably take someone else to figure it out as my programming skills are pretty rudimentary).