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Broadcom 4318 - Which pin to cover ?


Weiti
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Hi Folks,

today my brand new Broadcom 4318 arrived from eBay,

but im not quite sure which pin I need to cover...

 

I red it has to be pin 7 but I dont know...

 

Maybe anyone got a picture ?

 

I dont want to break it...

 

Thank you

 

Weiti

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Hi Folks,

today my brand new Broadcom 4318 arrived from eBay,

but im not quite sure which pin I need to cover...

 

I red it has to be pin 7 but I dont know...

 

Maybe anyone got a picture ?

 

I dont want to break it...

 

Thank you

 

Weiti

Well that depends on the exact card and the machine it goes into for how it is done and the reason you need to do it.

 

In 99% of all cases, you only need to tape off pin 7 if your laptop uses a card that only uses the pin 20 TTL signal to enable/disable the card and they tied pin 7 to ground and you got a card that only uses pin 7 methods.

 

Some use pin 7 via a hardware switch, some use pin 20 through a software switch and some use a combination of both, rare case is that a software switch is used to tie pin 7 to ground (some Gateway/Toshiba laptops).

 

If your card only uses pin 7 (and card), grounding turns the card off so tape over this pin usually works.

 

If your card uses pin 20 (and card), it takes a TTL signal to enable/disable the card and this is common on most BCM94318 (BCM4318) based cards.

 

If your card uses both pin 7 and pin 20 (and card) then the whole process becomes extremely difficult and the easy solution is to tape off pin 7, boot into windows, enable the card then restart the machine in OSX, of course you will have to do that every time you power on the machines after it has been turned off.

 

As well, depending on the laptop, it may whitelist the card so installing a different brand Broadcom card (DELL in an HP) doesn't work

 

If you are unsure of the actual card you have or the requirements of your BIOS, you can send it to me and I can re-ID the card and let you know of it's enabling requirements and provide you with specific instructions to make it work after you install it.

 

If the card requires both methods and your laptop doesn't, do not fret, I have a stack of miniPCI cards (BCM4306 offers the greatest flexibility and is really no different than your BCM4318) that I can re-ID for your machine that you shouldn't have an issue enabling or using.

 

Advantage here is that if I have to re-ID the card and your BIOS doesn't whitelist the ID's then you can re-ID the card to apple ID's and get full airport software functionality and support.

 

Just PM me if you want to go this route.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi ive a Acer Laptop and the problem is that my WIFI card aint getting Power .But this issue shows only under Macosx,under Windows everything works Perfectly.

 

The Notebook is a Acer Aspire 5739G ,ive changed the Intel Wifi to Broadcom BCM94321MC,so it should works right out off the box.

 

Ive tried to tape the pin R20 on to Top side ,R20 are 2 pins. And nothing, any solutions?

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