MP 1,1-5,1 Bluetooth Dongle

[sanfrancisofont1984]

How bad is the dongle solution compared to an internal bluetooth upgrade? All I care about right now is having usable AirPods.

I understand how the internal upgrade works but the process just has so many potential points of failure. Not to mention, the dongle is comparatively inexpensive (where I live at least).

 

[h9826790]

Very easy, and usually works better (due to better antenna reception)

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Bluetooth Dongle may not loaded with driver on booting the cMP, I guess.
In that case, you can not use Bluetooth keyboard for NVRAM resetting etc.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Bluetooth Dongle may not loaded with driver on booting the cMP, I guess.
In that case, you can not use Bluetooth keyboard for NVRAM resetting etc.

I don't think my original internal bluetooth really worked for that. Good point anyway.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I don't think my original internal bluetooth really worked for that. Good point anyway.

If the original Bluetooth card can't be used with Bluetooth keyboard for pre-boot screen, then a 4.0 Bluetooth dongle is better than it in every aspect I ever think of.

 

[EugW]

Which Mac?

The Bluetooth 2.0 dongle (Broadcom chipset) that I had for my Mac Pro 2006 worked well enough in OS X but would not work at bootup so I couldn't use it to select boot drives etc.

So I bought the OEM internal BT 2.0 card (Cambridge Silicon Radio) and now it works great at bootup with my Magic Keyboard. Range with the internal card appears better too, or at least as good, certainly not worse. I haven't tried a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle though.

BTW, the biggest problem I had with the installation was listening to the advice online and on this forum to use WiFi antenna #1 for Bluetooth, while using WiFi antennae #2 and #3 for WiFi. That was a major mistake, as that caused serious interference for WiFi during uploads.

I disconnected the Bluetooth module from antenna #1 and instead used the dedicated BT antenna, and now all the interference is completely gone. This makes sense as the BT antenna runs in a different location and thus has a much lower risk of interference.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

My cMP doesn't have the Bluetooth card. I don't have any Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, either.
But the connection for sound would be more convenient if I had Bluetooth. So I would buy one Bluetooth 4.0 dongle to transmit the sound to my mini amplifier.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

I got an ASUS USB-BT400 and it seems to work well for me (AirPods). I have not used Continuity Activation Tool; maybe I will.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

A little update. My AirPods appear to disconnect a lot when using VM. Very very often if using VirtualBox and a bit better for Parallels.

 

[Max Black]

I got an ASUS USB-BT400 and it seems to work well for me (AirPods). I have not used Continuity Activation Tool; maybe I will.

Can you please advice how you got the ASUS USB-BT400 to work on Mac Pro 5.1 ? I thought it works out of the box. Thank You.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

Yeah, works out of the box (Mojave, not sure about other OS version).

 

[mode11]

@sanfrancisofont1984 Does your ASUS adapter support AirDrop? Does it work in the boot picker?