MP 1,1-5,1 5.1 upgrade to BCM94360CD - no bluetooth with two different cards

[tampano]

Ciao everyone,

I'm getting crazy around this, so I'd like some ideas here.

On my 5.1 I installed the adapter card, picture attached, connected the BCM94360CD, connected the three wifi antennas, connected the Bluetooth antenna extension cable, connected the power cable to the original BT power port.

Result: WiFi works perfectly. Bluetooth, not available in the menu nor in System Preferences.

I thought maybe I bought a faulty Broadcom card. Found one on eBay cheap and in the neighbourood, collected, disconnected old, connected second one...same results. Same dead BT icon in the menu. No icons in System Preferences.

I also tried to revert polarities for the 5 volts. No change.

I also, yes I did, ignored the logic board port for power and created a USB-MicroJST cable on purpose to draw the 5 volts from somewhere else thinking it was the motherboard power to be dead (nonsense anyway as the original BT card worked like a charm).

No I am quite short of ideas.

What I am missing? There's nothing software to do, right?

Thanks for any input.

P

 

[Ludacrisvp]

The BT portion of the broadcom card doesn't need power from USB ...
It needs DATA from USB port.

The BT module is powered from the port, but Apple didn't follow mPCIe spec and include USB lanes in the 4,1/5,1 board (like they did with 1,1-3,1) so you need to get DATA connection to the USB ports.

And while both of your cards were likely good i'm not sure how they would have handled getting +5v sent to the data lines so fingers crossed you didn't fry the BT cards.

 

[tampano]

Ok. Maybe I misread something here and there and it's also possible I initially understood it was power that was needed, and instead it was data.

Let me be clearer then. What I did was following a post in another thread with this picture, and this is exactly the connection I made (also reversed, on the first card at least).

Are you saying I need to try the two lower pins on the board? And just to be clear, when we say "USB port" we're talking about the 4 pins micro JST where the original BT card was, right?

So, first picture is the adapter I bought. Second picture comes from the post I read here.

I'd appreciate any help to understand how I can fix this.

Btw...both cards work perfectly on WiFi

 

[Ludacrisvp]

D- and D+ are for the data lines. that is what the adapter board is providing is data lines.
I don't know if the diagram provided is accurate.

It is possible that your WiFi BT combo card wasn't seated perfectly and due to that you either didn't get powered or it didn't connect to that header properly for data.

I've had issues in the past with mPCIe cards not being seated 100% perfectly which caused BT or WiFi (usually BT) to not be detected.

 

[tommy chen]

the diagramm is correct

sometimes it is necessary to reset bluetooth
with shift + option(alt) on the top of the bar on the BT symbol
and execute the reset in the debug menu.

 

[tampano]

Apparently the debug menu (any menu actually) doesn’t appear on a “Bluetooth: not available”.

at this point it’s worth thinking it’s the adapter card being weird, no?

 

[hwojtek]

I've been thorough exactly this a couple of days ago. Took me a number of attempts to properly seat the card in the adapter, to seat the adapter, to seat the small plug into the adapter, connect the USB data with proper polarity. Eventually I sorted it out and it worked.
If you have tried two cards, it's makes even more sense that there is a slight procedural error and you need just a little bit of patience (and some luck). In my case it turned out the red/black wires were connected in reverse and when only I got the polarity right the BT part started working right away.

Take note that in order to use Handoff/Continuity, you need to disable SIP for a moment and do some Terminal work. You can safely enable SIP afterwards.