Hi,

I just got my hands on a 13" early 2015 MacBook pro, on big sur (i upgraded it. when i got it, it was on mavericks i think?) and when I got a hold of it, it was kernel panicking like a madman. I initially assumed that since there were kernel issues then that's why the keyboard and trackpad weren't working. After a wipe and clean install, reset SMC, refreshed NVRAM PRAM blah blah blah the peripherals still do not work. I was able to interface with an external keyboard and mouse just fine which was how I was able to get it back into working condition (besides the internal peripherals of course). The power button on the keyboard works (but I'm assuming that the power button does not tie into the rest of the keyboard since it is the primary power switch) and if the mac is sleeping, and i press a key on the internal keyboard, the screen wakes up! But it still doesn't recognize keyboard or trackpad input.

I did some digging through the system-profiler and found that the kernel module for the keyboard and mouse (i didn't see one for a trackpad so I'm assuming that the mouse kernel module is the driver for the trackpad?) aren't loaded. I of course tried loading these modules, which didn't return any errors, but the peripherals still didn't work.

I have also tried reseating both ends of the trackpad ribbon cable that runs across the middle of the batteries. No avail. I know that the trackpad trace doesn't end there, but im not very versed in working on hardware so I didn't bother trying to mess with anything else.

update: I ran system_profiler and piped to grep and searched for "keyboard" and i get this:

2021-05-20 17:06:56.097 AllowPasswordPref[1758:35621] error == Error Domain=com.apple.LocalAuthentication Code=-6 "Biometry is not available on this device." UserInfo={BiometryType=0, NSLocalizedDescription=Biometry is not available on this device.} isSupported == 0
2021-05-20 17:06:56.098 AllowPasswordPref[1758:35621] Hardware Check err == 0
2021-05-20 17:06:56.099 AllowPasswordPref[1758:35621] Result -1
2021-05-20 17:06:56.297 AllowPasswordPref[1768:35648] error == Error Domain=com.apple.LocalAuthentication Code=-6 "Biometry is not available on this device." UserInfo={BiometryType=0, NSLocalizedDescription=Biometry is not available on this device.} isSupported == 0
2021-05-20 17:06:56.298 AllowPasswordPref[1768:35648] Hardware Check err == 0
2021-05-20 17:06:56.298 AllowPasswordPref[1768:35648] Result -1
Identifier: com.apple.preference.keyboard
2021-05-20 17:07:02.039 system_profiler[1791:35850] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

I get a very similar output when grepping "trackpad":

2021-05-20 17:10:05.788 AllowPasswordPref[1849:37559] error == Error Domain=com.apple.LocalAuthentication Code=-6 "Biometry is not available on this device." UserInfo={BiometryType=0, NSLocalizedDescription=Biometry is not available on this device.} isSupported == 0
2021-05-20 17:10:05.789 AllowPasswordPref[1849:37559] Hardware Check err == 0
2021-05-20 17:10:05.789 AllowPasswordPref[1849:37559] Result -1
2021-05-20 17:10:05.891 AllowPasswordPref[1859:37585] error == Error Domain=com.apple.LocalAuthentication Code=-6 "Biometry is not available on this device." UserInfo={BiometryType=0, NSLocalizedDescription=Biometry is not available on this device.} isSupported == 0
2021-05-20 17:10:05.892 AllowPasswordPref[1859:37585] Hardware Check err == 0
2021-05-20 17:10:05.892 AllowPasswordPref[1859:37585] Result -1
Identifier: com.apple.preference.trackpad
2021-05-20 17:10:11.541 system_profiler[1880:37813] SPUSBDevice: IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService failed 0xe00002be

Can anyone help me make sense of this? From what I've read, the peripherals can be "locked" and "unlocked", but from what i understand you can unlock them by loading their kernel module with

kextload
(I already tried doing this as mentioned earlier in the most)

​

Is this just saying that the peripherals aren't being recognized? What is biometry data?

Thanks!

edit: Or is biometry data referring to touch id and the fact that this mac doesn't have it?