Lucky enough to have a Macbook Pro 17″ with an ExpressCard/34 slot? Then you’re not lucky enough to have built-in USB 3.0. We can fix that! You need to spend about 10 to 15 USD. Interested? Read on! It took me months just to find this post which gave me a 10 minute solution.
- First, purchase the ExpressCard/34; It needs to be based on a NEC chipset, uPD720202. aliexpress.com or eBay are your best bets.
- Install this kernel extension; this is not created nor hosted by me, don’t come here complaining :P
[Update Jul 27 ’15: this link is broken on the other end. No surprise to me though. That’s why I already added a shadow copy of the file to this article months ago, please see below] - You must activate the ‘kext-dev-mode’;
Shell commandsudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1″ - OS X 10.11 El Capitan has increased security on system files, you will need to disable this ‘rootless’ mode. OSXDaily has an excellent article on how to disable System Integrity Protection.
Reboot and enjoy!
(disclaimer: This is how it worked for me after months of googling and trying. Don’t give up easy :P)
Edit: shamelessly this destroyed my continuity activation done a few months back. Be careful!
Edit 2: After running the 2.0 version of the Continuity Activation tool my problems were solved.
Edit 3: For posterity, I placed the kext on my blog for download here, just in case.