Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Howto: Fix for Bluetooth Problems in Mac Pro
- Thread starter rectangular
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ghetto Cardboard-and-aluminum-foil Fix
1) Figure out the best path to your mouse.
2) Wrap cardboard with aluminum foil
3) Bounce the radio waves to the right place
Results:
1) Figure out the best path to your mouse.
2) Wrap cardboard with aluminum foil
3) Bounce the radio waves to the right place
Results:
Amazing FIX!!
This is for the MacPro Workstation 2006 model 1,1... I had almost no issues with Bluetooth unitllllll.... I upgraded the silly little 256MB Video card (NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT) to (actually added) an ATI Radeon HD 5770.
As soon as I added the ATI card and restarted, the bluetooth was jumpy from a Magic Mouse and the Trackpad was constantly connecting and disconnecting. I hooked up a USB mouse and went looking on my magic internet box and found this article... AWESOME!
Now all bluetooth devices work perfectly and both 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz channels on the Airport work fantastic.
The only stressful moment was that the new(formerly unused) lead was too short for anything. I had to give it a little extra tug... and it worked fine. And the only way to really do this is to stand over it, with the unit on its side and have a couple "black sticks" to move and snap into place.
Thanks SO much for this super fix!
This is for the MacPro Workstation 2006 model 1,1... I had almost no issues with Bluetooth unitllllll.... I upgraded the silly little 256MB Video card (NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT) to (actually added) an ATI Radeon HD 5770.
As soon as I added the ATI card and restarted, the bluetooth was jumpy from a Magic Mouse and the Trackpad was constantly connecting and disconnecting. I hooked up a USB mouse and went looking on my magic internet box and found this article... AWESOME!
Now all bluetooth devices work perfectly and both 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz channels on the Airport work fantastic.
The only stressful moment was that the new(formerly unused) lead was too short for anything. I had to give it a little extra tug... and it worked fine. And the only way to really do this is to stand over it, with the unit on its side and have a couple "black sticks" to move and snap into place.
Thanks SO much for this super fix!
I am going to try this soon. My magic track pad that I use with my Mac Pro 1,1 jumps around all the time and I have to adjust it on my desk to get it to go back to being smooth. I have had trouble connecting other Bluetooth devices in the past as well.
Hope this fix works!
Hope this fix works!
Amazing!
This fix is brilliant on my 2008 Mac Pro. After I upgraded to a Radeon 6870 graphics card (for the 2GB video RAM), my Magic Mouse started going haywire. I assumed I had dropped it one time too many and switched back to a spare USB Mighty Mouse. Well, after upgrading to Lion, I wanted to give my Magic Mouse another go. It didn't work AT ALL, and disconnected as soon as it connected every time. I did this wiring swap today (with a touch of difficulty, as I didn't want to bother disconnecting the 2 spare power cables and 2 SATA cables connected to the mobo, and they are quite taut), and now my mouse is working splendidly.
Cheers.
This fix is brilliant on my 2008 Mac Pro. After I upgraded to a Radeon 6870 graphics card (for the 2GB video RAM), my Magic Mouse started going haywire. I assumed I had dropped it one time too many and switched back to a spare USB Mighty Mouse. Well, after upgrading to Lion, I wanted to give my Magic Mouse another go. It didn't work AT ALL, and disconnected as soon as it connected every time. I did this wiring swap today (with a touch of difficulty, as I didn't want to bother disconnecting the 2 spare power cables and 2 SATA cables connected to the mobo, and they are quite taut), and now my mouse is working splendidly.
Cheers.
A cautionary tale...
I came across this excellent howto as well and have just tried and failed to implement it. My experience - you have to be fairly dextrous to pull it off as the plastic fan case gets right in the way. At least, I failed. But then again I am not very good at this type of thing!
In my case as I was trying to make the top airport wire get as far as the bluetooth connector, the gold connector came off the wire completely...
So no I am using the spare in the top of the airport and the bluetooth is back where it is (after much cursing). Still works.. if anything actually a bit better So maybe its just a bad connection?
I came across this excellent howto as well and have just tried and failed to implement it. My experience - you have to be fairly dextrous to pull it off as the plastic fan case gets right in the way. At least, I failed. But then again I am not very good at this type of thing!
In my case as I was trying to make the top airport wire get as far as the bluetooth connector, the gold connector came off the wire completely...
So no I am using the spare in the top of the airport and the bluetooth is back where it is (after much cursing). Still works.. if anything actually a bit better
So maybe its just a bad connection?Didn't work for me, but...
I was installing a 1 Tb hard drive, to replace the original 250 Gig and decided to look into the bluetooth problem. My mouse had been anything but magical since I got it for Christmas last year. Constant in and out of connection. The wireless KB was flakey too.
My wire (labelled #1) was there, unused, but it was actually long enough to move down to the bluetooth chip. I didn't do that, though.
#2 was too short to move to the BT, though it was supposed to be, according to the instructions.
BUT... when I bumped the #3 wire, it very easily came off its connection. The #2 wire was very firmly connected to its post.
I guessed that the loose #3 wire was MY problem and made sure that it was well seated.
Put it all together and ... problem fixed!! The mouse has a range of about 2 paces now, which is just fine. It's very stable too, after 5 hours of use.
I was installing a 1 Tb hard drive, to replace the original 250 Gig and decided to look into the bluetooth problem. My mouse had been anything but magical since I got it for Christmas last year. Constant in and out of connection. The wireless KB was flakey too.
My wire (labelled #1) was there, unused, but it was actually long enough to move down to the bluetooth chip. I didn't do that, though.
#2 was too short to move to the BT, though it was supposed to be, according to the instructions.
BUT... when I bumped the #3 wire, it very easily came off its connection. The #2 wire was very firmly connected to its post.
I guessed that the loose #3 wire was MY problem and made sure that it was well seated.
Put it all together and ... problem fixed!! The mouse has a range of about 2 paces now, which is just fine. It's very stable too, after 5 hours of use.
I gave up with apple's crappy onboard Bluetooth. I disconnected it and plugged in a targus Bluetooth USB adapter ACB10US1. Works great.
http://targus.mobi/productsearch.aspx?searchedTerms=Acb10us®ionId=7&x=47&y=22
http://targus.mobi/productsearch.aspx?searchedTerms=Acb10us®ionId=7&x=47&y=22
That worked. Thank you so much.
I posted that a year ago... it seems that users are still getting this problem with new mac pros!
Here's the original Apple Support Discussion Thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=633522
Anyways, I made the original rough hand sketch diagram that seemed to help quite a few people on the Apple Forums, so since this issue is still pertinent I quickly made a .pdf intended to be printed out and followed during the fix. It has some diagrams made in illustrator, and labeled photos of my fixed Mac Pro. Let me know if there is anything I should change/modify. I hope this can continue to be of help to people. P.S. I am a design major and did this very quickly, please don't show my professors
http://www.thelocale.org/files/howtos/mac-pro-bluetooth-howto.pdf
mirror: http://web.mac.com/gcrowl/mac-pro-bluetooth-howto.pdf
So, in summary (if you are going to perform this, check out the pdf):
There are going to be four wires. For me, there were two unlabeled. One was short and disconnected (wouldn't reach the BT module), and the other was longer and attached to the upper airport port. Another was labeled 3 and attached to the lower airport port, and another was labeled (mislabeled) BT and attached to the BT module.
1. Detach upper airport wire (long, unlabeled)
2. Plug in previously detached short unlabeled wire into the upper airport port.
3. Unplug wire labeled BT from the bluetooth module. Put plastic shroud on it. This wire will be unused.
4. Take longer unlabeled wire that used to be plugged into upper airport plug, and plug it into the bluetooth module.
5. Enjoy.
My Airport reception ended up being much better, and my bluetooth reception is amazing. Before I could barely use my mouse and keyboard a foot away, now I can use it in another room in my apartment (as long as someone shouts to me what i am doing
Digg This: http://digg.com/apple/Fix_Bluetooth_Reception_Problem_in_some_Mac_Pros
More photos
(Been meaning to post this. I know there are still quite a few 2008 Mac Pro users out there and some are bound to find this thread. Hope it helps.)
Last year I got tired of lousy Magic Mouse behavior when paired with the Mac Pro's internal bluetooth.
I tried the antenna cable switch described here. It made a significant improvement but still too disruptive when using graphics tools. The ultimate solution for me was to buy a RocketFish RF-MRBTAD bluetooth dongle for $5 on eBay. It's plugged into a USB port on the back of my monitor and works great!
The dongle automatically disables the internal bluetooth. Some people use Apple's developer tools to confirm this, but I simply looked at System Profiler's bluetooth info for Incoming/Outgoing serial ports --- the RFCOMM channels become different.
Anyhow, while doing the antenna cable swap I took pictures and decided to post them here as reference. My system does not have a wifi card so the internals and original wiring location looked slightly different than in the OP's photo.
Photo #1 the top arrow points to the bundle of unused antenna cables. You can see one of them has a '2' tag attached. The cables are almost hidden underneath the motherboard so might be easy to overlook. The bottom red arrow points to the factory-connected BT antenna cable.
Photo #2 the top arrow points to the antenna bundle after I fished it out from behind the board. The bottom arrow again points to the BT cable --- the tag got twisted while fishing.
Photo #3 the arrow points to a piece of black tape that needs to be undone in order to separate the bundle of unused antenna wires. If you're careful you can re-use it to bundle up again when the swap is finished.
Tip: be patient when removing and attaching cables to the BT card, and be sure to use an appropriate tool (spudger or similar).
Photo #4 the top arrow shows where I tucked the rebundled unused antenna cables. The bottom arrow shows the '1' antenna now attached to the BT card.
(Been meaning to post this. I know there are still quite a few 2008 Mac Pro users out there and some are bound to find this thread. Hope it helps.)
Last year I got tired of lousy Magic Mouse behavior when paired with the Mac Pro's internal bluetooth.
I tried the antenna cable switch described here. It made a significant improvement but still too disruptive when using graphics tools. The ultimate solution for me was to buy a RocketFish RF-MRBTAD bluetooth dongle for $5 on eBay. It's plugged into a USB port on the back of my monitor and works great!
The dongle automatically disables the internal bluetooth. Some people use Apple's developer tools to confirm this, but I simply looked at System Profiler's bluetooth info for Incoming/Outgoing serial ports --- the RFCOMM channels become different.
Anyhow, while doing the antenna cable swap I took pictures and decided to post them here as reference. My system does not have a wifi card so the internals and original wiring location looked slightly different than in the OP's photo.
Photo #1 the top arrow points to the bundle of unused antenna cables. You can see one of them has a '2' tag attached. The cables are almost hidden underneath the motherboard so might be easy to overlook. The bottom red arrow points to the factory-connected BT antenna cable.
Photo #2 the top arrow points to the antenna bundle after I fished it out from behind the board. The bottom arrow again points to the BT cable --- the tag got twisted while fishing.
Photo #3 the arrow points to a piece of black tape that needs to be undone in order to separate the bundle of unused antenna wires. If you're careful you can re-use it to bundle up again when the swap is finished.
Tip: be patient when removing and attaching cables to the BT card, and be sure to use an appropriate tool (spudger or similar).
Photo #4 the top arrow shows where I tucked the rebundled unused antenna cables. The bottom arrow shows the '1' antenna now attached to the BT card.
Attachments
Old thread, I know.
I seem to be having some magic trackpad issues with my 5,1 Mac Pro. Is this fix still relevant to that model?
Anyone know?
I seem to be having some magic trackpad issues with my 5,1 Mac Pro. Is this fix still relevant to that model?
Anyone know?
Might have to try this. The Airport and Bluetooth antennas are spaced far apart in the 5,1 Mac Pros.
What dongle did you use?
I used a supposed "high power" one supposedly made for OS X. I forget the name, it's not sold anymore. I'm pretty sure any one works. It just seamlessly takes over for the internal one, you'll probably have to re-pair.
I use an external dongle connected to USB on a wired keyboard with my 4,1. I disconnected the internal Bluetooth. Works great, especially since the dongle is always immediately adjacent to my wireless mouse.
I might do this and plug it into one of my monitors cuz I just started getting the laggy mouse
Was thinking about this one
edit
nvm not compatible with mac
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.