macOS Tahoe Beta Drops FireWire Support

[mrmidi]

My MOTU 828mkII FW that worked fine over Sequoia no longer functions over Tahoe — I won't bore anyone with all of the things that I tried—and some of the processes did run—but macOS 26 prevented my interface from working. Throwing in the towel.

Wait, without AppleFWAudio.kext injection?

 

[mikehalloran]

Wait, without AppleFWAudio.kext injection?

All four of the AppleFW kexts are present. They do not want it to work.

 

[BillyJoeJimBob]

That is incorrect. IOFirewireFamiy.kext allows Sequoia and previous macOS to support FireWire if you have compatible 3rd party drivers and a compatible adapter. My MOTU 828mkII FW Audio/MIDI interface works fine over Sequoia, for example. The kext is found in MacintoshHD/System/Library/Extensions — this Library folder cannot normally be added to, unlike the HD/Library and Users/…/Library folders.

View attachment 2524144

My Tahoe Test drive still contains the extension since I updated the OS from Sequoia.

View attachment 2524149

In fact, all of the FW extensions are still present.

View attachment 2524153

My MOTU 828mkII FW that worked fine over Sequoia no longer functions over Tahoe — I won't bore anyone with all of the things that I tried—and some of the processes did run—but macOS 26 prevented my interface from working. Throwing in the towel.

CoreAudio FW support was removed in Ventura. This means that FW hard drives, DVD writers etc. that do not have drivers will not work. I have an old FW box for external drives and burners that stopped working in Ventura.

Could that kext be employed via OpenCore Legacy Patcher?