hey guys it's lance at max sound solutions and today i installed a wi-fi
bluetooth 4.2 new card into my mac pro that i bought on ebay i'm going to put the link
in the description it wasn't cheap it was 120 dollars you can get the bluetooth 4.0 version
for 10 bucks less or you can just get all the parts yourself i already had a bluetooth
antenna extension because my mac pro lives in the closet over there and i have the little
antenna comes up on my desk so it reaches all the way over here and i have no i used to have sort of
interruptions in my bluetooth with my track pad but ever since i added that extension it's rock
solid but of course with the older bluetooth and wi-fi you don't get continuity you don't get
hand off you don't get air drop and especially in monterrey if you upgrade to monterrey your legacy
cards don't work at all if you're using martin lowe's open core package from what i understand
the open core legacy patcher which is a different way of doing open core i haven't really looked
into it that much but folks who have used that say they can use their legacy bluetooth and
wi-fi cards but if you use martin lowe's package it does not work and i think martin lowe's package
allows you i know it does allows you to you know boot up into windows boot up into different
mac os's whereas i don't think open core legacy patcher does so i'm just going to give you the
quick install and try and give you i'm going to give you very clear photos so i'm going to try and
make this really clear and explain the whole process it's tricky the little antenna cables are
tiny and i mean tiny so that's the real clincher is being able to click those into place and it
just takes a little bit of patience and having it at the right angle step one is remove your
processor tray from your mac pro okay the first thing you want to do is discharge yourself of any
static electricity maybe wear one of those wrist wraps if you want to be extra safe
and the other thing is you want to unplug it from the wall stand it up on a table i think when you
remove the processor tray which is step number one you should definitely stand it up don't lie it on
its back yet so remove the processor tray then lie your mac pro on its back to access the bluetooth
card which you can see in the back there by the fan step two is to remove the original legacy
bluetooth card from the logic board the next step is to unplug the bluetooth antenna cable which you
see right there connected to the bluetooth card this is the old card that's already in the mac pro
we're going to be removing this completely but first step is to unplug the antenna cable
so just grab it with your fingernails or some plastic tweezers and give it a good pull
upwards and it should unsnap from the housing so there you can see the antenna cable is now loose
and detached from the card so now you want to disconnect the data cable from the logic
board which is right where the arrow is you want to just pull up you can grab the three
little wires and pull it up that way gently see sawing it back and forth until it comes out of
the logic board next step is to remove the screw that holds the bluetooth card to the logic board
that's right above the gold antenna connector you need a little phillips screwdriver but basically
apple put some loctite on that thing so as far as mine was concerned it was really
almost impossible to get it unscrewed without stripping it so what i did was i rotated the card
counterclockwise towards me which was a little risky so if the board is at nine o'clock right now
you want to rotate it downward to eight o'clock just a little enough to get that screw loosened
now the other thing you could do i believe is you can just leave this board where it is and
not undo that screw as long as the data cable is unplugged and the antenna is removed it's
no longer in use so you can just park it on the logic board it does not have to come out of there
and this is what it looks like with the data cable removed and the bluetooth card removed
now i put a little piece of electrical tape on the old bluetooth antenna that's just dangling there
now you're not going to do that if you're going to use his little extension that came in the package
to go to that antenna cable but i'm using my own antenna extension so i didn't use his cable at all
and honestly i think the bluetooth extension is the way to go watch my earlier video on it because
it gives you plenty of slack and you don't have to mess around with attaching his antenna cable
to the old mac antenna which has very little range step three attach the four antenna cables
to the wi-fi bluetooth card three of them are for wi-fi and one of them is for the bluetooth
so you want to connect the bluetooth extender the female part of the cable to the bluetooth
card the new card and that goes to port 3 from the top the third one from the top then you want
to feed the cable underneath on top of the logic board over to where the old bluetooth card was
and connect the other end of the cable to apple's original bluetooth antenna that we detached from
the original bluetooth card and snap them together okay so now that we got bluetooth attached we have
to attach the three wi-fi connectors now if you don't have a wi-fi card installed in your mac pro
already like mine didn't come with them the wires were just down there and they're labeled one two
and three but if you do have a wi-fi card in there you obviously have to remove that first
and you might have the same loctite issue that i had with the bluetooth card i'm not sure because
i didn't have one but regardless once you get that card out of there you then want to attach
the antennas to the new card and you've got very little wiggle room they're very short now they are
under a clip so you can remove them from the clip you just lift up on the top part of the clip and
you can pull the cables out and that will give you a little more slack i was able to place the wi-fi
card on the ridge of the mac pro here and then get each antenna right above where it needs to be
and then push down and pop it in that to me is the easiest way instead of fumbling around trying to
hold the card yourself have the card laying flat on the ridge here and hold it down so it's not
moving around and you can move it forward or back a little bit to get it right under the antenna and
i had to rotate these antennas i had to kind of bend them around because they really wanted to be
aiming upward so you can twist the cable quite a bit so that it's now pointing down naturally
and you're not fighting it once you get that you position the card right under the cable and you
push down on the connector and clip it goes in but man it has to be lined up just right do not force
it or you're going to bend a pin or something so just be patient take your time there's no rush
and don't get frustrated because you will and once you get one you'll go ah i get it they just snap
in okay so the worst part is really overt so now what we have to do is just insert the larger end
of the bluetooth data cable into the two pins you see here and that is the pcie adapter that
our wi-fi card will go into in step five we're going to flip over the wi-fi bluetooth card with
all the antennas connected and insert it into the mini pcie card then insert the two cards the combo
cards into the wi-fi card port on the logic board okay so the next step is also a little tricky
we're gonna insert the bluetooth wi-fi card with the antennas attached we're going to flip that
over and insert it into the pcie card with the data cable connected so flip it over and you you
got to kind of twist the cables pre-twist them before you flip it over because you don't want
the antennas to pop off the card but they they're locked on there pretty tight so you flip it over
and you insert it into the mini pcie adapter as shown so now that this whole package is
together we want to insert the two cards that are mounted together into the reciprocal on the logic
board i found you have to kind of back the card in first and then insert it okay now that the
airport bluetooth card is inserted into the logic board we're gonna put the final screw in to hold
it in place so i only screwed the bottom card onto the logic board i there i think there's
two more screws that i've could have screwed into the upper card to also seat it on the
logic board but my mac pro is not moving around i just didn't feel it was necessary and i was
scared that i might drop one of the screws into the logic board so i just went with the one screw
so our final step here we're going to connect the other end of the new bluetooth data cable
into the bluetooth port on the logic board where the old bluetooth card was located
so you snap it in there you want the two wires to be in the upper part of the port not the lower
part so just line it up pop it in and you should be good to go now to make a long story even longer
i used this bluetooth extension kit i originally had it connected to my old bluetooth card
and then i connected it to the new card so i did not use his extension that he then wants you
to run to the old bluetooth antenna and connect those i use this kit now do you need to do this
it just depends on where your mac pro is located and what type of signal you're
getting to your bluetooth devices i absolutely needed it because my mac pro lives in the closet
i have a video on the install of this but just look at it this way is that if you need more
range these antenna kits are great and you can connect it directly to that bluetooth wi-fi card
the new one that you are installing so if you want to go that route it does eat up a pcie slot
my graphics card eats up three slots so it's a double card and then it eats into the next
pcie slot so i was able to put this in even though the graphics card is kind of leaning
into that slot i can't fit a card in there but i could fit this in the in the bay door
okay thanks for watching please subscribe to my channel give me the thumbs up or the thumbs down
and uh of course i prefer the thumbs up and uh i'll see you on the next mac sound solutions video