MP 1,1-5,1 Using a USB Bluetooth dongle with MacPro5,1 and Big Sur

[Stex]

The card is all good, wifi works okay, just the BT antenna cable.

I found another 5,1 MP case with a dead logic board that does have the BT antenna - so I might grab that and see. That case is also very nice externally so it is tempting. I've got the technician guide already. I might as well just do it properly - especially if the dongles don't have all the functionality like hand-off, etc.

It's pretty hard to find all these bits and pieces locally here in Australia, everything ends up from offshore with weeks and weeks delay.

Fortunately it was the 6 core machine, not the fast one. I spent a lot of time today researching various fixes - I did consider getting an external BT antenna and putting it out through a PCI slot. I also thought about pulling apart an old dead laptop and getting the BT antenna from that but figured the case of the MP might prevent it from working well.

An external antenna connected to the internal upgraded BT card will give you much better signal. Maybe it was a blessing to have that connector broken! I currently have an external antenna connected to my upgraded BT-wifi card (noted in my signature) and I don’t look back to using the original Apple antenna. The latter is well documented here in this sub-forum to be a very poor antenna as far as signal, regardless of the card type, whether original or upgraded. BT external antennas are cheap, I got the antenna extension cable to exit via one of the PCI cards installed since it had some ventilation holes, but since BT antenna cables are so thin, they can go through any of the holes of the cheesegrater on the back. In order to avoid any issues with macOS 12.0.1 and above, I ended up connecting the internal upgraded BT-wifi card to one external USB 2 input on the back. Got some extension cables for that setup, too. All works flawlessly.

 

[avro707]

I'm posting this for anyone who should have to replace the BT antenna in the MacPro 5,1.

I got another dead MP5,1 with just back-plane board, some case fans and the case with the BT antenna and cable installed.

This little BT antenna board was screwed down so hard that it was near impossible to undo the screw securing the antenna, and of course the screw head is soft so it rounds out. Grrr.

Once I got that out - Apple says:

3. Gently grasp Bluetooth antenna board and pull it out of its mounting.
4. Remove antenna board and cable from enclosure.

This little board is painfully stuck in there too - the inner edge of it (nearest back of the case) is stuck by a small lug in the case and it takes a bit of wriggling carefully to release it - then it will slide out.

I purchased one of those OSX Wifi antennas (internal ones) which just have a sticky tape back to secure them and the range was pitiful. Just terrible, the range was pitiful, I tried sticking it against the grill at the back and the results were awful.

You could try looping the BT antenna cable out of the case through one of the holes in the back of the case and stick this antenna on the outside of the case but it would be messy.

The Apple OEM one is difficult to remove and install, but it's a better bet.