iMAC with Broadcom 14e4-1686 BCM57766 : link status down

[speleo14]

(2017-03-15 14:43)mastacontrola Wrote:  I don't have an account, though creating one shouldn't be too problematic.

Yes it is, because it's not for free (Apple.... ).

(2017-03-15 14:43)mastacontrola Wrote:  That said, as this does appear to be a firmware issue, if we can't hold our breaths that a fix will come to place, might it be easier to find out a "change log" of what was changed between firmware B05 vs. B15? Even if it means something was added/adjusted that might be able to be corrected for in the iPXE BCM driver handling? Of course this would lead down a road that would essentially make the Mac's only usable on an 'ipxe' created driver system (Leaving out SNP/SNPONLY I suppse?)

Just thoughts in my head. I don't expect we'll see Apple pushing out a fix for this because of iPXE not working, but maybe we can get what was changed so the Opensource community might be able to provide a work around.

I agree that Apple will probably not fix this (or at least not in the near future), but I have no idea how and where to get any information on what was changed in the firmware...

I checked the Sierra installer and indeed there are 2 install packages there that refer to firmware (EmbeddedOsFirmware.pkg and FirmwareUpdate.pkg); unfortunately, both are .pkg files of the newer type (single binaries, not directories) so there is no possibility to look into them.
Additionally, I checked if the new firmware version for the Late 2015 iMac is available as a download, but it isn't (and neither is the older on that is working).

I have absolutely no experience with Boot ROMs and firmware, so I'm out of ideas what we could try. Anyone else? I have enough (different) Macs here that I can use for testing if anybody has any suggestions on WHAT to test.