M.2 wifi card installed in Half Mini PCIE slot (Atheros AR956x): Toshiba Satellite Laptop

[chetanya95]

Hi,

I have a Toshiba laptop Satellite L50-B and it came preinstalled with a Qualcomm Atheros Wifi Card. On the device manager in Windows it shows Atheros AR956x Wireless Network Adapter with Vendor ID: 168C and Device ID: 0036. I have installed Hackintosh (MacOS Sierra) on my laptop and wanted to upgrade my wifi card as it is not compatible with Hackintosh OS.

Upon opening my laptop back case I found the wifi card to be attached to the motherboard like this:

It is a G86C0005EG10 wifi card (with BT) and it looks like a M.2 card. But the connector of the card has more pins in it and it looks like a half mini PCIE connector. It is the stock wifi card and motherboard came from the manufacturer (Toshiba). Should I upgrade to a M.2 card or to a half mini PCIE card or I can upgrade to both?

I was thinking to purchase Broadcom BCM94352HMB which is a dual band wifi card. Will it be compatible with my laptop?

Also can you tell me from the pictures does my laptop have 1x1 antenna or 2x2 antenna. It looks like a 2x2 antenna but I always used to think that my laptop have 1x1 antenna as I never got speed more than 150mbps on my laptop with my xiaomi router 3 which have 300mbps 2.4 GHz connection on 802.11n. (The router is set to 40M bandwidth and it easily connects at 300mbps with other laptops in my home)

P.S: I couldn't get much of my motherboard information even from CPU-Z. It says "Type2 - Board Vendor/Product/Version Name1" in the 'Manufacturer'/'Model'. And it says "Intel Haswell-ULT" in 'chipset' and "Intel H8x/P8x" in 'Southbridge'.

Thanks

 

[hang-the-9]

Before you start trying to change out adapters, do you need any faster speed than 150? How fast is your internet connection? If your WiFi is as fast or faster than the ISP connection, getting a faster WiFi card won't do you any good unless you move files around the internet network often.

 

[astrorion26]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_bLKSCFDU
http://forum.osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2925-bluetooth-firmware-uploader/
The first one will get the AR956x WiFi working and the second will get bluetooth working. I use them and even AirDrop is supported. If you want Bluetooth to work make sure you get USB working or bluetooth won't work