Wireless Buyers Guide

# PCIe

By far the most popular option for desktop users has been to buy an old Apple AirPort wireless card and place it into a PCIe riser card. The benefits of this are that as long as the hardware works natively on a real Mac, it will work without any kexts/framework modifications. With PCIe, you have a couple of options:

  • Apple AirPort Card adapted to a full sized PCIe adapter (recommended)
  • Apple AirPort Card adapted to M.2 B+M Key (same as what NVMe SSDs use)
  • Apple AirPort Card adapted to M.2 A+E Key (same as what Intel wireless cards use)
  • Full sized PCIe wireless card

Currently supported chipsets:

  • BCM943602CDP
  • BCM943602CD
  • BCM94360CD
  • BCM94331CD (may need to force the kext to load for Catalina)
  • BCM94360CS2
  • BCM943602CS
  • BCM94360CSAX
  • BCM94360CS
  • BCM94352Z
  • BCM94350ZAE

# Supported (Full sized PCIe wireless card)

  • BCM94360CD (ABGN+AC):

    • Fenvi FV T919 (Bluetooth 4.0)
    • Fenvi AC1900 (No Bluetooth, EOL)
    • TP-LINK Archer T9E AC1900 (No Bluetooth, EOL)
    • TP-LINK Archer T8E (No Bluetooth)
    • RNX-AC1900PCE (No Bluetooth)
    • ASUS PCE-AC66 (No Bluetooth)
    • ASUS PCE-AC68 (No Bluetooth)

  • BCM94360CS2 (ABGN+AC):

    • Fenvi FV-HB1200 (Bluetooth 4.0)
    • AWD Wireless LAN Card (No Bluetooth)

  • BCM94352 (ABGN+AC):

    • TP-LINK Archer T6 (No Bluetooth)
    • Rosewill RNX-AC1300PCE (No Bluetooth)
    • ASUS PCE-AC56 (No Bluetooth)

All cards presented here besides the Apple AirPort and Fenvi cards require the following:

  • AirportBrcmFixup (opens new window)
  • BrcmPatchRAM (opens new window)
    • BrcmBluetoothInjector
      • Do not use with macOS 12, use BlueToolFixup instead
      • If you dual boot both macOS 11 or under and macOS 12, MinKernel and MaxKernel under Kernel -> Add in your config can be used to load one kext or the other in a specific OS
    • BrcmFirmwareData
    • BrcmPatchRAM fix:
      • BrcmPatchRAM3 for macOS 10.14+ (must be paired with BrcmBluetoothInjector unless on macOS 12)
      • BrcmPatchRAM2 for macOS 10.11-10.14
      • BrcmPatchRAM for macOS 10.10 and older
    • BlueToolFixup:
      • Used in place of BrcmBluetoothInjector on macOS 12
      • See above dual booting note

# Older Models (unsupported in Mojave)

With these models, you'll need to reinject the old plugin your wireless card used in High Sierra to work in Mojave. There are a couple of different kexts to do this but generally, we recommend avoiding these cards unless absolutely necessary.

Note: Injecting the kext into macOS Catalina is even more unstable, highly encouraged to upgrade

  • Atheros 9380:
    • TP-Link TL-WDN4800
    • Rosewill N900
    • Atheros AR5BDT92
  • Atheros 9280:
    • Dell DW 1525
    • Gemtek WPEA-113N
  • Atheros AR9287:
    • Nexxt Solutions Saros 300 (APLDT300N1)
    • TP-LINK TL-WN881ND
  • Atheros AR9285:
    • AzureWave AW-NE106
    • Rosewill RNX-N150PCe v1
    • SMC SMCWPCIeS-N
    • TP-LINK TL-WN781ND v1
    • ZyXEL NWD3105

⟵ Mini PCIe ⟶