Mac Pro 4,1 (5,1) Bluetooth upgrade questions
I have an 8 core Mac Pro 4,1 (flashed to 5,1) from early 2009 which did not come with wifi. The original Bluetooth was always very spotty, so I always used a dongle. This generally worked OK but lately, perhaps due to OS upgrades, I found myself losing connections frequently. I invested in a combo mini PCIe card from osxwifi.com which has latest wifi and bluetooth and is compatible with all features of High Sierra (my present OS) and Mojave. The installation instructions called for disconnecting the USB cable from the old Bluetooth module and then connecting it to an extension USB cable that came with the dual card. I did so, and also removed the old Bluetooth card. I found that the Bluetooth dongle I had been using stopped working once the old Bluetooth card and been disconnected from USB, but I did not notice if the Bluetooth preference was present in System Prefs. Now, after removing the old card, I can confirm that there is no Bluetooth preference and menu bar says "Bluetooth unavailable." The new dual card has been connected to the USB connector that was removed from the old Bluetooth card and wifi works, but the system is not seeing any Bluetooth. Could it be that the old Bluetooth card is needed for the system to see any Bluetooth? In other words, is the USB connection to the original Bluetooth card the only logical connection to the system, or was there some other communication between the system board and the original Bluetooth module? The reason I ask is that I am wondering if replacing the old, original BT card with a used module might restore the Bluetooth system preference and enable the system to see the new Bluetooth on the dual card.
