Bluetooth is not working on Sony Vaio laptop using the Atheros AR5B225 Dual Wifi/Bluetooth Card.
WiFi works but the Bluetooth doesn't.
dmesg -lerr
Bluetooth: hci0: don't support firmware rome 0x1020200
The issue seems identical to this kernel bug
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210681
Any idea when this will be merged/patched into the solus kernel?
Is there any workarounds in the interim.

EDIT: I filed a bug report on Dev Tracker:
T9598 Bluetooth Atheros AR5B225 Not Working
Bug Report Closed:

Closing as invalid. This is fixed in 5.11.2. We cannot update to the 5.11 series until a new NVIDIA Vulkan developer driver is out that is on the 460.xx series and supports all the changes in 5.11.

Would simply installing a New Intel WiFi/Bluetooth card fix the issue or is it a board issue.
Sorry for not really understanding 😅

    bigrammy
    Well I will answer my own question just in case someone else runs into this issue before Solus updates the Kernel to v5.11.2.
    I am surprised this Kernel Bug has not affected more people but I guess these Atheros WiFi cards are not that popular.
    Anyway rather than wait for the Kernel update I went ahead and purchased a Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 from Amazon for £14 with next day delivery 😁
    I installed it and the Dual Wifi Bands showed up 2.4ghz & 5ghz but no Bluetooth 🙁
    After some research (Google time) it turns out that I needed to tape off Pin #51 on this Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 card and that fixed it so Bluetooth is working again!!! 😀
    For Info:
    If anyone sees mention of Pin #20 that pin is for turning the card on & off so if you see no WiFi & Bluetooth at all that pin may need taping off too. On this Sony Vaio it has a slide button to turn the WiFi/Bluetooth card on and off so I left Pin 20 alone.


      I didn't notice any issues like this with my Atheros card, but I also didn't keep it long. The wifi range for it was terrible, so I upgraded to an AX200.

        Brucehankins It was a mainline kernel bug introduced in version 5.10 which is now fixed in v5.11.
        We maybe on v5.10 for a while it seems so I thought I would add some details incase anyone runs into this issue.

          9 months later

          • [deleted]

          • Post #5

          I am still having this issue, WiFi works but the Bluetooth doesn't (not detected), with a Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 AR5B225. I did not need the Bluetooth in 2-3 years but I need it now.

            [deleted] WiFi works but the Bluetooth doesn't

            I recently bought a multi-device Bluetooth keyboard, and tried to use it with my laptop and the media computer for the TV. Then I found out that the keyboard is BT5.1 and the laptop was BT4.0. My solution was to buy a new radio for the laptop that supports BT up to 5.2.

            It was trivial to install (pull off two antenna wires, remove a screw, and swap the cards), cost only $30, and everything is working great now.

            It might be that with a little research you could find a new replacement for your existing WiFi/Bluetooth radio, and thereby solve your problem for a small investment and a little bit of effort. I'd start with the user community for your computer brand ... that's what I did.

                • [deleted]

                • Post #7

                WetGeek I am too lazy to open up my old laptop at this moment. I tried with LTS kernel and same issue, so I guess that Bluetooth in my AspireV5-571G never worked before and 5.x.x kernel did not introduce new bugs.

                  5 days later

                  • [deleted]

                  • Post #8

                  Tried to boot another distro (Zorin) debian based and same issue, so probably not distro but kernel dependent bug... 🙁

                  2 months later