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Alternative wifi card for the MBA?

M

moxyjeero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2011
3
0
I was thinking if the airport card in my MBA can be replaceed with one from Intel? Because I would like to utilize the WiDi fucntion that requires the 2nd gen Core CPU, Intel integrated graphic, and the Intel wireless module (the only one which the MBA lacks).

Has anyone done this?
 
moxyjeero said:
I was thinking if the airport card in my MBA can be replaceed with one from Intel? Because I would like to utilize the WiDi fucntion that requires the 2nd gen Core CPU, Intel integrated graphic, and the Intel wireless module (the only one which the MBA lacks).

Has anyone done this?
Click to expand...

I believe (not entirely sure though) that the wifi card is soldered to the motherboard and not modular. So you may be out of luck, unfortunately.
 
Good question, perhaps look at iFixIt's teardown and see if it is a plug-in. It's probably a half-height Broadcom AGN card made by Foxconn. I'm not aware of any PC OEMs that use WiFi cards that are soldered on the board-- for regulatory reasons...

(i.e. both the board and the card would have to be assembled to pass WiFi regulatory. Since the board and card are usually made by different CM's, most OEMs like to keep these two items on separate assembly and reg tracks.)
 
Ah I stand corrected, glad to see it's a replacable half-height card. I just kind of figured since it was Apple and how tight it is in the Air that it would be soldered. (Like the RAM). Never occurred to me that they couldn't do that because of regulatory reasons.
 
I know Dell dual-sources WiFi cards for their laptops (BRCM, INTL), to give each a piece of the pie, and to provide a backup in case one supplier can't pass testing or misses a delivery deadline.

Not sure if Apple dual-sources as well, but I think they were using Atheros WiFi cards for a while, then switched to Broadcom.
 
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