VMware + macOS Ventura + Barrot Bluetooth (0A12:0001 / 0x08E7) — Looking for developers familiar with Apple's Bluetooth stack

Maarif Khan Official — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:01:18 +0000

I've spent several days reverse engineering a Bluetooth compatibility issue between VMware Workstation and macOS Ventura.

This is not a normal Bluetooth support question. I've already gone well beyond typical troubleshooting and I'm hoping someone familiar with macOS Bluetooth internals, IOKit, DriverKit, BlueTool, or OpenCore may recognize what's happening.

Environment

Host:

Windows 11

Virtualization:

VMware Workstation
USB controller fixed at USB 3.2
USB passthrough enabled
VMware shared Bluetooth disabled

Guest:

macOS Ventura

Bluetooth USB Adapter:

USB VID/PID:

0A12:0001

Initially appears to be:

CSR8510 A10

However, after issuing raw HCI commands, the controller identifies itself as:

Bluetooth Manufacturer ID:
0x08E7

Barrot Technology Co., Ltd.

The device also reports:

USB revision:
0x8891

which matches Linux fake-CSR handling.

What has already been tested

This has already been verified:

✔ USB passthrough works

✔ VMware correctly passes the USB device into Ventura

✔ macOS detects the USB device

✔ Apple Bluetooth transport attempts to start

✔ Raw HCI communication works

Commands tested successfully:

HCI Reset
Read Local Version
Read Supported Commands
Read BD_ADDR

The adapter returns a valid Bluetooth address.

So the controller is definitely alive.

The actual problem

Despite the controller responding correctly,

Ventura never adopts it as the active Bluetooth controller.

Instead macOS reports something like

BCM_4350C2

Address:
NULL

No usable HCI controller becomes available.

Bluetooth never becomes functional.

OpenCore

Already tested.

BlueToolFixup was also investigated.

OpenCore itself does not appear to solve the problem.

From everything I've found, BlueToolFixup is not a Barrot compatibility layer.

What makes this interesting

The adapter is not actually CSR.

It is:

Barrot Technology
Manufacturer 0x08E7

while simultaneously exposing

VID 0A12
PID 0001

which mimics older CSR hardware.

Linux already contains fake-CSR handling for devices around:

bcdDevice 0x8891

which strongly suggests this controller requires a special initialization sequence.

Current hypothesis

The failure no longer appears to be:

VMware USB passthrough
USB permissions
HCI transport
the Bluetooth radio itself

Instead it appears to be somewhere between

AppleBluetoothUSBTransport

↓

BlueTool

↓

IOBluetoothHCIController

where Ventura refuses to register the controller after initial HCI communication.

What I'm looking for

Has anyone worked with:

Barrot Bluetooth controllers
fake CSR devices
Apple's Bluetooth transport
BlueTool
DriverKit Bluetooth transports
IOBluetoothFamily
USB Bluetooth initialization quirks

Specifically:

Has anyone successfully used a Barrot (0x08E7) controller under Ventura?
Does Apple reject Barrot after Read Local Version?
Is there already a transport patch somewhere?
Has anyone ported Linux's fake-CSR initialization to macOS?
Would DriverKit be the correct layer, or does this require patching Apple's Bluetooth transport?
Evidence collected

So far we've confirmed:

VMware USB 3.2 passthrough works.
USB 2.0 was ruled out because it breaks input devices, so testing continues with USB 3.2 only.
Raw HCI communication (Reset and Read BD_ADDR) was identified as the decisive diagnostic path, confirming the controller itself responds.
The investigation concluded the device identifies as Barrot Technology (0x08E7) while presenting the legacy CSR USB ID (0A12:0001), suggesting a fake-CSR implementation rather than genuine CSR hardware.
The proposed direction is to reproduce Linux's Barrot/fake-CSR initialization sequence because Apple's transport does not appear to handle this device automatically.

I'd be happy to share:

USB captures
HCI logs
Wireshark captures
Python HCI tools
VMware configuration
Reverse engineering notes

if anyone wants to investigate.

DEV Community: Maarif Khan Official

VMware + macOS Ventura + Barrot Bluetooth (0A12:0001 / 0x08E7) — Looking for developers familiar with Apple's Bluetooth stack