New AirPort board = No App Store?

[TheWeirdFriendWithOldMacs]

Hi,

A friend of mine dropped his MBP 15" Retina Early 2013 and the wifi stopped working.
I helped him buy and install a "new" AirPort/Bluetooth board (661-6534) as well as installing macOS Catalina, and everything seemed to be working just fine. Until he tried to log in to App Store/iTunes that is.

He types his credentials, the wheel spins for a few seconds and the login box goes away. But it doesn't sign him in!

Now, he's been on the phone with Apple support several times but they haven't been able to tell him what's wrong. Last time he called though, he got to speak with a senior Mac tech and my friend mentioned the AirPort/BT board switch. The Apple rep then told him that's obviously the problem. That the S/N of the board doesn't match the logic board and therefore Apple's server refuses the handshake, even though the board was pulled out of a working, identical computer.

I guess this seems somewhat plausible, but I've never heard of Apple locking down the components on computers this old!

Is this some new bs with Catalina, is the rep full of crap or have I missed something?

 

[maflynn]

Have him try to sign in on a different Mac. Apple doesn't lock down the apple store that way, heck even hackintoshes can sign into the app store

 

[TheWeirdFriendWithOldMacs]

Signing in from his iPhone works fine, I'll ask him to try on another Mac.
Right? Do you have any idea what could actually cause this problem?

 

[junkw]

I would first try to remove app store prefs, cache etc... and then try to login

when i look at my zsh history one of th ecommand I run was:

rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.appstore/Data/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore

and you can google for others maybe