Air A1370 Replace Wireless Chipset

G'day

Over at iFixit they tore down the new 11" inch MacBook Air and in Step 10 they interestingly revealed what looks like a standard Mini-PCIE Broadcom wireless chipset. My question is whether or not it would be possible to replace the Broadcom Mini-PCIE chipset with perhaps an Atheros Mini-PCIE chipset and enjoy things like injection and AP functionality.

If interested in the tear down have a look at MacBook Air 11" Model A1370 Teardown - Page 2 - iFixit

Regards, Dom

You could certainly swap the card, the question is whether OS X has driver support for the other WiFi chipset.

Without saying too much, I have been told that OSX does not support the Atheros Mini-PCIE chipset. So like CWA said, even if it would plug into the Mini-PCIE slot, you will have issues getting that chipset to work under OSX.

And thanks for the URL on the teardown. I was waiting for someone to take a new Air apart.

dtravis7 said:

And thanks for the URL on the teardown. I was waiting for someone to take a new Air apart.

Click to expand...

Believe it or not...the guy that I bought the $50 G4 Mac-mini from last night told me about the new Macbook Air tear-down at iFixit.

But here's a VERY interesting side note. The G4 Mini seller said that the iFixit teardown mentioned that Apple is now using "special non-removable" screws...very similar to the hardware used to hold together the stalls in public restroom bathrooms...you know the kind of hardware that you can screw in...but cannot remove.

It sounded like the iFixit teardown folks had to modify their tools (not sure if it was a flat-tipped or torx screwdriver)...to be able to remove the screws. It also sounded like the screw heads themselves got damaged in the process.

Long story short...it sounds like with these special non-removable screws...Apple its trying to minimize the ability of the average user to take apart the new Macbook Air to do upgrades/repairs....but at the same time not make it too difficult for Apple technicians to do repairs (like taking apart G3 & G4 iBooks)! Maybe (and probably expensive) a special removable tool will be (or already is) available to get these screw out without damaging them.

- Nick

Macbook Air

MacBook Air has six batteries | MacUser

New type of screws for Macbook Air!!

Plug n' Play

Hmmm well I have never used Mac OS X but as far as I am aware it is based upon the BSD Subsystem. So my belief would be that it can be done.

Wireless Driver for Mac OS X
There's some reading for you all, I am excited about this and what I can bring to the community with it.

However the old Airport extreme cards used to use an Atheros chipset didn't they? Would it not be a matter of sourcing one of them and enjoying Plug n' Play?

Cheers

/edit http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=57316 Also found that, your thoughts on it's success rate?