Continuity and Handoff Capable Apple Mini Cards + PCIe and mini-PCIe Adapters

[stiligFox]

Have you looked into a PCI riser/extender? That could help you use that 1x slot which you need.

The problem is if I used an extender, the card would have no place to go since the PowerMac G5 case I'm using has only 4 slots in the back. It could lay loose in the case but That would look rather bad...

 

[remy1961]

i just ordered this card and this adapter from eBay. Since I am using the Gigabyte H87N-Wifi board, and the only pci-e slot is not available, I will use the above mentioned adapter that will be connected to my half size mini-pci-e to full size mini pci-e adapter. I hope it will work.

 

[vahegan]

Hi everyone! I need your help.

I've got this adapter from AliExpress today, the seller seems credible (with 3 diamonds) and mainly sells various spare parts for Mac. The package contained the BCM94360CD card, a PCI Express adapter card, the USB cable, screws (and even a small screwdriver) and the four antennas.

I assembled everything and installed in the small PCIex slot on my Z87MX-D3H mobo. I am using an i7 processor and GeForce GT640 video card, with Yosemite (with Clover) installed on an EVO840 SSD.

After the installation, the LED on the adapter card is ON and red, but my system does not seem to be aware of the new hardware. Please, can anyone advise me, what can I do to make this beast work? Am I doing something wrong? Thank you!

 

[cheetaa]

Hi everyone! I need your help.

I've got this adapter from AliExpress today, the seller seems credible (with 3 diamonds) and mainly sells various spare parts for Mac. The package contained the BCM94360CD card, a PCI Express adapter card, the USB cable, screws (and even a small screwdriver) and the four antennas.

I assembled everything and installed in the small PCIex slot on my Z87MX-D3H mobo. I am using an i7 processor and GeForce GT640 video card, with Yosemite (with Clover) installed on an EVO840 SSD.

After the installation, the LED on the adapter card is ON and red, but my system does not seem to be aware of the new hardware. Please, can anyone advise me, what can I do to make this beast work? Am I doing something wrong? Thank you!

If the RED led is ON when the system is in stand-by, seems like a power source problem. The led must be green in stand-by, and must be red in working state. Maybe your adapter don't work in the slot that you inserted it. You can try in another slot.

 

[mareko2]

Before I give up on these ~ is there one of these adapters that someone can confirm works in a slot _besides_ a 1x slot? My Mobo has only one which is blocked and I can't extend it. I need an adapter that works in an 8x slot

anyone? Would love to get this to work >w<

Read Post #17: http://www.tonymacx86.com/network/1...rds-pcie-mini-pcie-adapters-2.html#post915926

Read Post #67: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...-macbook-air-owner-wanted/page-4#entry2092517

 

[vahegan]

If the RED led is ON when the system is in stand-by, seems like a power source problem. The led must be green in stand-by, and must be red in working state. Maybe your adapter don't work in the slot that you inserted it. You can try in another slot.

No luck. On my Z87MX-D3H I have got only 4 slots. One is taken by the graphics card and the second is also blocked by it. This I have 2 vacant slots: one PCIEX1 and one PCIEX16. I tried the card in both slots and the result is the same: the LED is red and the card is not recognized by the system.

Any other thoughts on what can solve my problem?

 

[Skvo]

As you can see from the connector strip, the left hand side lanes are PCIe for Wifi, the middle lanes are unused (So no SDIO interface) and the right-most lanes are USB for Bluetooth.

Here you see a sample Intel WiFi card with PCIe and USB connectivity lanes marked for reference:

View attachment 112703

Beware of other laptops/cards on the market which are SDIO based, those are not supported by any existing OS X drivers.

Many laptops come with support for both signals in slot M.2: PCI-Express and SDIO...

For example, Dell Venue 11 Pro. I recently helped to change the module on it for OS X.

The original module was - Dell DW1537 (Qualcomm Atheros QCSNFA282).
This module use SDIO chipset Atheros AR6004.
https://wikidevi.com/files/Atheros/specsheets/AR6004.pdf
Photos in attach...

His replacement set Broadcom BCM94352Z.
The module BCM94352Z has successfully launched and worked without problems in Dell Venue 11 Pro.
.

 

[vahegan]

No luck.

Well, I tried this card in PCIEX1 slot on 2 other computers.

One was also a hackintosh with Mavericks (Chimera bootloader), based on Asus P8Z68-V LX mainboard. The result was the same as on my main computer with Yosemite (Clover): the system does not recognize the hardware, and the LED is red.

At this time I was almost sure that the card was faulty but decided to give it a last try. This time it was MSI Z68A-GD65 mobo with Windows 7. To my surprise, windows immediately installed a generic Bluetooth driver and was able to pair with my Bluetooth headphone (the connection wasn't reliable though and I couldn't get any sound out of it, but I didn't spend much time trying to fix this, I was mainly concerned to prove that the card was functional). The card was shown in Device Manager as unrecognized device. I installed the Win7x64 Bootcamp driver for Broadcom, and the card was now recognized as a "WiFi ac adapter" but was shown with an exclamation mark and an error that it failed to start. Again, I wasn't interested in spending too much time to have it working in windows on that computer, so I didn't continue.

So, based on the above, I am assuming that my problem is one of the following:
1. Hardware is only compatible with certain motherboards
2. MacOS X (both Mavericks and Yosemite) somehow does not recognize the hardware out of the box

I will try to install the card again on the Z87NX-D3H and will install windows on one partition. If windows can see the card, then it is software issue and I need to find a way to convince Yosemite to see the adapter. If windows does not detect the card, then its a hardware compatibility issue and I will need to find out what is wrong and maybe find a hardware hack. Well, I didn't expect that this was going to be so complicated...

 

[Noisemaker]

Hello guys, i have two questions:

-I got the z87m-d3h mob, but in the specs on the gigabyte website i can't find any pciex1 slot

-Do the bcm94360cd + adapter work without clover?

 

[marbleduck]

I purchased this --snip--
Handoff, Continuity (SMS Forwarding, Cellular Calls), 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth all work great now.

Did you have to do any changes to the software? I ordered the same parts as you, and, while Bluetooth is recognized by the OS, I can't find any of my devices listed.