MP 7,1 BT & WiFi

[flowrider]

The 5,1 cMP had a mini card for BT and WiFi. I've read Apple's 7,1 NcMP White Paper and searched Apple's site and can not find where the BT and WiFi cards are located. They reference the antenna and list them in the specs. But, where are they and would they be upgradeable in the future

Lou

 

[tsialex]

Seems integrated to the module 820-01546-07, same one where power button and the two TB3 are. No decent photos of it yet, but seems that is non upgrade-able. This is the only iFixit photo that shows it:

 

[tomsmods]

No idea, but if I had to guess: they would be near the top panel. Having WiFi on the inside of a metal box wouldn't make much sense. Also I expect separate some sort of RF shielding around Wifi chips. I don't see anything like that on the backplane. There is no more detail shown after this step on the iFixit teardown, so I wonder what's under there.

 

[Snow Tiger]

Having WiFi on the inside of a metal box wouldn't make much sense. Also I expect separate some sort of RF shielding around Wifi chips.

But that is precisely where Apple hid the WiFi antennas for the cMPs - inside a dedicated heavy aluminum metal compartment on the bottom of the chassis . Not surprisingly , reception was awful .

 

[Schismz]

Antenna/Handles.

 

[tommy chen]

But that is precisely where Apple hid the WiFi antennas for the cMPs - inside a dedicated heavy aluminum metal compartment on the bottom of the chassis . Not surprisingly , reception was awful .

if you turn the cMP upside down, you will notice that the bottom of the cage is made of plastic and therefore the reception is not so bad.

what apple did stupidly is to make the bluetooth antenna in the plastic frame of the PCIe access.
This has the effect that almost every USB3.0 card interferes with.

therefore i take the free cable 2 for bluetooth on devices without external antenna when converting to the combo card and connect the free one on the card with the original bluetooth antenna.