Ac Wireless Card For Mac
There is no whitelist. Here is the Service manual: See p. 96 You have the 17 inch model and for the 15 inch AMD models HP actually offered an AC card. This one: Broadcom BCM 4352 WLAN 802.11 AC+BT4 2x2HMC for HP Pavilion 15 AMD computer models available for Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 724935-005 This is an equivalent aftermarket card sold through amazon.com: That card would work for you but, I do have to warn that installation is no easy matter. It requires extensive disassembly and will jeopardize the warranty. You should not try to install an Intel card as they are known not to play nice with AMD computers. The Broadcom will be your best bet.
Best Wireless Ac Card
If you have questions let us know. If this is 'the Answer' please click 'Accept as Solution' to help others find it. Hi: I will also add that the parts list for your model indicates that it comes with a Realtek RTL8188EE 802.11bgn Wi-Fi adapter. Forum members have reported that upon disassembling some of the notebooks, only one antenna is present when that model card is installed. I couldn't say if your specific model has one or two antennas present. In order to install a dual band wireless card, you would need to have two antennas present.
Adding a 2nd antenna if one is not present, would involve disassembling the display panel in order to properly route a 2nd antenna. Hi,: While I believe that information regarding the card not being compatible with HP notebooks is incorrect, here is the HP Broadcom AC card that you would need to get. Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 combo HP Part # 724935-001 Make sure your notebook has two antennas connected to the current wlan card, or be willing and able to disassemble the entire notebook including the display panel area to properly run the required 2nd antenna. Do not rely on the picture in the service manual to determine this. That is the whole issue. Vendors who sell wireless cards are well aware of the HP whitelist and are sick of people buying the cards only to find out they don't work and try to return them so they put a disclaimer. But it is only meaningful if your laptop has the HP whitelist.
If it does not have the whitelist, you can install any wireless card of the right form factor. Your laptop is slightly older than the laptop owned by the person who started this thread. My advice was correct for that person but I think your laptop might still has the whitelist so you are really not able to do much of an upgrade. I am not 100% sure on this as your model is actually about at the border.issued just about the time the whitelist disappeared so, since HP has never issued a definitive list of those laptops with an without the whitelist it is impossible to be 100% sure.
It seems that I have mixed up something totally.;) The BCM94360CS2 is only a 2x2 MIMO combo card (with only two antenna connectors) and is therefore NOT really suitable for upgrading an iMac! (It reaches max. 867Mbps WiFi speed.) In contrast, the BCM943602CS and BCM94360CSAX runs in 3x3 MIMO mode, - they will reach on the 5 GHz band up to 1.3 Gbps. However, on these card three U.FL female to MHF4 male plug antenna adapter cables (see my post) are needed.
The BCM94360CD has four normal U.FL connectors, so no antenna adapters are needed. Well, on the BCM94360CD it is (strongly) recommended to install a fourth antenna. This will be a HARD task, - especially at an Unibody iMac (with aluminum backside).
Regarding the cost, it is possible to get also at the Unibody iMac line an 802.11ac & BT4.x upgrade for approx $30. But as already mentioned, at least soldering of one cable is required. I think it was the USB power. So these crazy expensive 'upgrade kits' may be for some people a good alternative.;). Well, I have done it, - finally!:) I have upgraded successfully a 24' iMac 7,1 and a 24' iMac 9,1 with an original 802.11ac & BT 4.0 Apple Broadcom BCM94360CSAX combo card.
Wireless Ac Dongle Mac
So far I can say the WiFi and Bluetooth functionality is working perfectly (and independently from each other) under Mac OS X and Windows 7 & 10. The original two 802.11n and the Bluetooth antennas can be reused (with adapters), - although they are of course not 802.11ac optimized. Okay, what's needed? It seems that the situation has changed during the last months. There exists meanwhile the possibility to install an original Apple BCM94360CD, BCM94360CSAX or BCM943602CS (M.2) 802.11ac & Bluetooth combo card into an older Aluminum iMac. With that solution you will obtain at yours old iMac 802.11ac WiFi and full Bluetooth 4.x functionality.
You have just to look for the right M.2 to Mini PCIe adapter. There are several sellers on ebay that offer “BCM94360CD upgrade kits”. Because it’s an original Apple card it will work out of the box in Mac OS X, - at least in more recent versions like Mavericks and Yosemite. Under Yosemite you will also get the new Continuity & Handoff OS features. Keep in mind that with only two antennas (in 2x2 mode) you will only reach approx. 867 Mbps and not full 1.3 Gbps performance. The third antenna will be used for the new Bluetooth 4.0 function of the BCM94360CD card; - the old Bluetooth module has to be removed.
Of course you can add a fourth antenna to get the maximal (3x3) 1.3 Gbps 802.11ac performance. On an iMac computer it should be possible to install a further aerial but that may be not so easy. The simplest 802.11ac (3x3 antenna config) upgrade can be realized with the BCM94360CSAX or BCM943602CS combo cards. They will internally shift between Bluetooth and 802.11ac.
With the three available antennas of an iMac it should be possible to reach (near) 1.3 Gbps WiFi performance. More information can be found at my second answer to this 802.11ac upgrade question. It is important to note that this “simple upgrade” possibility belongs primarily to the Apple iMac line computers. They seem to have “normal Mini PCIe slots” which incorporates also USB functionality. Well, this is true for the Aluminum iMac model range. Note, several MacBooks and MacPro computes do not offer USB functionality on their Mini PCIe slots. To enable also the Bluetooth 4.0 function of the Apple 802.11ac & Bluetooth combo card you need in such cases a special M.2 to Mini PCIe adapter.
With that you can apply through an external cable also USB functionality to the 802.11ac & Bluetooth combo. Coming from the adapter, this cable has to be connected to the old Bluetooth module connector on the PCB which is in fact an embedded USB port. Can anyone confirm what version of Bluetooth is required for Mac Unlock using an Apple Watch? I'm excited to get Handoff, Continuity, and AC Wifi for my 2010 iMac, but the killer feature for my wife (it's her machine) would be opening her Mac with her Apple Watch. She has an Original Apple Watch Sport running the latest watchOS 3.
I wanted to use the BCM94360CD card for its fourth antenna, but it seems to only support 4.0 and I'm afraid of choosing the wrong card without 4.1 support if that is required. Any help would be useful. Thanks in advance to the ifixit community. I already replaced/upgraded a failing HDD in my iMac thanks to the help and guides found here and the ease of that job made me confident enough to tackle this project too!
You will have to figure out which framework works with this and edit it like I did here: with the core brightness.frameworks to get nightshirt to work on older macs. Just because macOS Sierra is running doesn't mean that all functions of it will work unfortunately. Mac virtual machine for windows. Alternatively, you could use clover boot loader with a smbios that tricks your Mac into thinking it's a newer model year and it will work then. But this can affect other things like USB ports and stuff. It's worth a try.
I installed Clover on my 2007 iMac to make it think it was a late 2013 in order to get nightshift to work before I figured out how to edit the frameworks to have a 2007 model year work natively. Preparing to do the upgrade on my 27' 2010 iMac. Already ordered the Wi-Fi/BT card, the BCM94360CD.
Found the U.FL extension cable for the BT antenna on data-alliance.net. Figured 18' would be plenty. The adapter card with USB I'll pick up on eBay. What I'm not figuring out is the additional antenna. How should it terminate? I'm finding plenty of U.FL to RP-SMA cables online, but I know that's definitely Not what I need here.
I thought the antenna would simply terminate with no additional connector. Is that the case or should I be looking for something else? Again, thanks in advance.
Making the switch to wireless ac is worthwhile and the best way to go about it is just as you are doing by updating one device at a time as the opportunity presents itself. Since wireless ac is compatible with all previous forms of wifi, interconnectivity will not be a problem. There is one issue with using the Intel 7260 card in your specific computer, though. I have read somewhere that the 7260 will only work on Intel Haswell-based computers. I believe it even mentions that on the Intel web site. Kenneth, Sorry the testing I've now done show Apples current implementation is not leveraging the full throughput the 802.11ac standard offers. You see the number of streams is the key here.
The current offerings only offer dual streams not the full three stream implementation to gain the full bandwidth. Because of that it makes no sense upgrading current 802.11n systems.
Wireless Mac Id
There are also other issues here per a given system that also effects things. In all cases you're not getting what you think. Don't forget the limit of your link is the pathway and the far end devices ability to send or receive information.
Current residential internet services can't supply the needed bandwidth and the far end server drives are often behind a firewall that packet shapes to limit a given sessions bandwidth so no one user consumes the available servers resources. Bottom-line here is unless you have your own high performance server hanging off its own 802.11ac AP there is not enough gain to upgrade currently. Interesting topic, - but even if the card will fit physically, the main problem with the Intel 7260ac card is the missing driver support in Mac OS X.
So far I know there is currently absolutely no Intel Wi-Fi driver available. Therefore, on an iMac you will only get you Intel 7260ac card working under Linux or Windows operating system, - not Mac OS X. That doesn’t make a lot of sense for me. However, it makes absolutely sense if you are using a “Mac OS free” iMac computer.;) Well I can confirm that the Intel 7260ac card (with Bluetooth 4.0) does NOT require an Intel only or Intel Haswell-based system.
I installed it at an Acer Aspire One 721, AMD Athlon II Neo CPU based Netbook. It works with latest Intel drivers absolutely perfect!! Hi Dan, My English is not perfect, but the question was 'Can I swap out the original wifi card for an Intel 7260 card that gets 802.11ac?' For me that sounds like Paul would try to replace his existing original 802.11n Wifi card by an Intel 7260 802.11ac card. Is this misunderstood? As mentioned it should work, physically.
So far there is no EFI firmware lock against foreign / non-apple hardware parts in yours iMac. (Never tested) For example, HP has such restrictions in their laptop firmware. However, I can confirm that a 2007 iMac Apple (Broadcom) Airport card is compatible with a 2006 iMac. First iMac has EFI64, second EFI32, - the card is still working perfectly under Mac OS X and Win 7.
But as I mentioned, - you will run with any Intel 7260ac chip based card into heavy driver troubles under Mac OS X. The following (single band) 802.11ac card will probably work, - it's Broadcom BCM4360 based. AND, most important, there exist a driver hack for Mac OS X. I think you mixing things here. Depending on the iMac series you will have a PC Card or mSATA or now the M.2. In this model its a PC Card.
But just because you have a standards based interface does not mean the OS can access the board. This is where the addressing is defined by the systems firmware (EFI). Different board manufactures use different addresses. While the same vendor may reuse the same address so as an example Broadcom different series boards will have the same memory address but it will be different than Intels' board. So swapping over between different Broadcom boards is more likely (Apple may even ask them to give them a special bd as well which they have in a few cases).
Lastly, as you noted the OS drivers are an issue. Does Intel offer a OS-X driver (or did some one hack one together)? Not that I know of. So the bottom line here: I don't see this as a workable solution. And as you pointed out the antenna limitations also limit the benefit. Don't waste your time and money. Hi Guys, I know this is an older post so I apologize for hijacking it.
I bought an Early 2009 iMac, 24', 2.66Ghz. I removed the WD 1TB hdd and replaced it with a 2TB SSHD. As above I would also like to possibly update my wifi card. I have a 240mb Fiber Optic connection. With unlimited downloads. At the moment this iMac is getting between 17mb and 24mb speed.
My phone gets 50mb over the wifi, and my laptop which is an Acer Aspire 5750 gets 90mb speed. So if I put a gigabit wireless card in this iMac will i get better than 24mb. Thanks for the help.
I have just upgraded to wifi AC and Bluetooth 4 using the kit from osxwifi.com and the ifixit and osxwifi guides. Awkward but straightforward and everything is working perfectly, including continuity, etc. Also, mouse, keyboard etc are working much better. I am retired with no special computer skills so anyone should be able to do this if they follow the instructions to the letter and are patient, especially with the screen data cable which is the only real problem for me. I have a mid-2011, 21.5' iMac with 500GB SSD (upgraded using fixit guide) 20GB RAM and macOS Sierra version 10.12.3 Beta. Perhaps it's wishful thinking but my computer seems to be faster with these upgrades than the equivalent newer models. It's certainly a cheaper way of enhancing performance.
Hi Olivier Biot, - thanks for this feedback! Question, how and on which band you have tested the performance and what's your router? According to the Wikidevi website the BCM94360CSAX is like the BCM943602CS able to reach in 3x3 MIMO mode at the 5 GHz band speeds up to 1.3 Gbps.
This is the same speed like the BCM94360CD has. However, because of it's fourth antenna the BCM94360CD can simultaneously run with 3x3 MIMO and Bluetooth 4.x. The BCM94360CSAX and the BCM943602CS will most likely fall back to 2x2 MIMO when BT 4.x is used on the same time. Thanks for the fast replay. Well, after searching the web I am not really wiser.;) As mentioned, Wikidevi and several other sources defines the BCM94360CSAX as 3x3 MIMO capable with up to 1.3 Gbps performance. If that's really true, then the J2 connector is not Bluetooth-only, - it will be also used for the third 802.11ac (5 Ghz) stream.
It is important to note that the max. Stream capability has nothing to do with the MU-MIMO technique of the 'second wave' 802.11ac standard (finalized in 2016). However, other websites defines the BCM94360CSAX as only 2x2 MIMO compliant, - totally confusing. The MacBook Pro 15' Retina (Late 2013) (which contains the BCM94360CSAX) is sometimes advertised as 1.3 Gpbs 802.11ac capable.
Unfortunately there exist no official Apple documentation regarding the MIMO capability of their products, - very disappointing.:( Update to my comment: According to the following article from The Register the MacBook Pro 15' Retina (Late 2013) is definitively capable to support 3x3 MIMO with 1.3 Gbps. This belongs then also to the BCM94360CSAX combo card! (At the screenshot it can be seen that BT was disabled for testing, - that may be a reason?). Tried again just now. One of the adapters fits ok, 'just works', second one is marginal, the third one no way just falls right off.
U.FL connectors are designed to fail first on the 'female' part, the one that is on the cable. That's a good design for a setup like this, where you don't want to connect/disconnect after installation.
Because you don't want the part soldered to your computer to fail. That would be bad. SO: I think I may have squished at least one of these adapters. I tried to be very careful. I have re-assembled cell phones and laptop wifi parts before, but this piece was really difficult. SO ORDER SIX OF THE ADAPTERS, FOLKS. Also I just ordered another WiFi card from the eBay.
If it turns out to be very different experience I will post update here. (Would still be nice to know how to specify the U.FL connector size.) So much help from this guide and the comments here, seriously I thank you all.
Hi Boyd, - the antenna adapter should be always of the MHF4 size. For that upgrade described here three female U.FL to MHF4 male adapter are needed. This is fundamental important, - any other size will NOT fit. Be aware, - there are several very similar connectors which are all described as M.FL. Unfortunately M.FL is a fully misleading term because it stands for different connector sizes. Some are just minimal larger, others are just minimal smaller. So, again as mentioned, - anything other then MHF4 will NOT fit.
I'm really glad I found this thread. I got an early 2008 imac 24'. I already bought a BCM94360CD card. But I got two questions. First, I can only find u.fl to mhf cables of 8 cm length on ebay - would that be long enough for an early 2008 imac 24'? Or is there another source for purchasing longer cables? I can only find this one seller on ebay.
Second, I don't know which miniPCI express to M.2 adapter to buy. There is always something about keys, and I don't get from which side to count the pins. Does the BCM94360CD have 6 pins or 12 pins, i.e. Do I need an adapter for key B or key E, or something different? Would appreaciate hints! The BCM94360CD card needs the same M.2 adapter like the BCM94360CSAX and BCM943602CS cards.
Just search on ebay for 'BCM94360CD BCM94331CD adapter card' and you will find A LOT. There is one for $5.98 with two mounting holes. This will be a prefect choice, - no washer is needed with that M.2 adapter model. Regarding the BCM94360CD card you do NOT need any antenna adapter. The BCM94360CD card uses the same U.FL connectors like the old 802.11n cards.
Well, because it has a fourth connector an additional antenna is recommended. But don't ask me where to install it in the iMac, - I have absolutely no idea.;). Thank you, Clemens, for your fast reply! I mixed up the letters yesterday, sorry for my mistake. It says on one side of the card BCM94360CS, and on the other side it says BCM94360CSAX.
It also has only 3 antenna plugs: J0, J1, J2. The position is like on the photos in your guide. So would this M.2 adapter work? Also this means I need antenna adaptors? The only seller I could find on the internet is this one: But I am worried the cord might be too short.
Maybe I am searching for the wrong terms or maybe German google is not the right choice for searching. Any hints on if those adaptors I linked would work? Or another site that sells adaptors with longer cables?
Thanks in advance! These are exactly the right parts, - perfect / perfekt!:) I would recommend these for the original ALU iMac line (2007 - early 2009). The other M.2 adapter posted by olivier.biot has only one mounting hole (on the upper left), so there is a washer needed (as seen on my photos).
The standard length of the antenna adapter is between 6 to 10 cm and this is really far enough. For the original ALU iMac line no longer length is needed! If you still want longer antenna adapter cables then you can specify this during the purchase, - just write ebay seller bydpete a message. Hi Seb, - which Mac OS version you have installed? At first you should check the antenna config and the connection of the adapter cables. I have upgraded several original ALU iMac computers and have never noticed such a behavior. If the symptom still persist also with other / different access points then your BCM94360CSAX card may be faulty.
There are many ebay sellers which offers this card, - some are described as new / unused others as refurbished. So it may be possible that you get a faulty one.:-( Furthermore there are different labeled BCM94360CSAX cards, - some include Chinese letters at the front. Therefore it could be that not all BCM94360CSAX cards are genuine Apple.;-). Again Hi Seb, - interesting, that was my original antenna config! I changed it then to the other one. Reason: Several other 802.11ac upgrade threads mentioned that J2 should be always Bluetooth.
Whatever, it could be that there were some variability in the manufacturing process. As a consequence not all antennas will work with a 802.11ac card.
The 5Ghz WiFi technique seems to be much more susceptible then the 2,4Ghz BT / WiFi one. Whatever thanks for this hint! Will not this alternative antenna config in my thread.;-).
Hi Seb & Clemens. In the midst of 2007 imac 20' upgrade also. Installed new 9300 cpu.
Installed wifi card BCM94360CSAX, as well as antenna adapters and wifi card adapter. El CApitan starts well. Problem is opposite of Seb - using J0 = WHITE, J1 = Black, J2 = Blue (like Clemens said), my wifi works fine but my bluetooth is non functioning (not available).
Removed original bluetooth module from logic board also. I imagine this was needed. Is there any solution you could think of to get Bluetooth working again?
DO I try Seb's antenna pattern above (J1 = Blue, etc.)? If I do switch them, how hard is it to unclip the snap connection on J1 and J2 on the connectors? If I don't use bluetooth, other than hooking up peripherys, are there other newer functions that use bluetooth that I would be missing out on?
Because if it is too hard, I will just use a USB dongle type keyboard. ANy ideas/help appreciated. Hi, I did the osxwifi upgrade at the beginning of the year and, so far, I haven’t had any WiFi/bluetooth problems. I am currently running High Sierra beta 6. My only problem is, as the ambient temperature is close to 40 Centigrade during the day, I occasionally have overheating problems, especially when using video. I installed smcFanControl which works well but is noisy so I have ordered a Sanyo San Ace B76 blower fan which I will attach externally over the warmest vent to suck the heat out.
This should be a much quieter option.