MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 4,1 and a 5th PCI-E connector?

[joelkalsi]

The airport connector looks like a mini PCI-E connector and it got me thinking has anyone equipped this port with anything other than a wifi/bt card? It may lack a +5V or +12V power pin as there are separate wires for the airport card (which include the antenna, but one of them is for power?) but I was thinking it could be fixed with the wire available. I couldn't find any info about this connector/port being used for some other use, ie. for USB3 upgrade with the help of an extension cable. Is it a mini PCI-e port with power deficiency?

 

[jscipione]

It’s a mini PCIe port, it does supply power, it’s only 1x speed and there’s not much you can use if for besides adding some internal USB headers or a micro-SSD.

 

[joelkalsi]

It’s a mini PCIe port, it does supply power, it’s only 1x speed and there’s not much you can use if for besides adding some internal USB headers or a micro-SSD.

Found this

Maybe it could be used with an old Mac EFI GPU for boot screen and secondary displays, would need an external case though.

Edit : OpenCore seems to solve the boot screen issue, but I haven't tried it yet.

Edit 2 : Some data crunching where the card does most of the work on-board before returning the results to the system could be viable for this.

 

[zedex]

Its an old question but interesting nonetheless the less. I think it was the potential to repurpose this slot that first brought me to macrumors forums so many years ago.

I like the idea of connecting a GT120 to it for bootscreen use only.. where to position it inside the case would be the next big challenge..

 

[joelkalsi]

Its an old question but interesting nonetheless the less. I think it was the potential to repurpose this slot that first brought me to macrumors forums so many years ago.

I like the idea of connecting a GT120 to it for bootscreen use only.. where to position it inside the case would be the next big challenge..

Basically if there is a short enough card it could possibly be bubblegum fitted in the optical drive bay area? 3D printing some kind of a holder could be okay.

Are the PCIe extension cables prone to EMI/RFI disturbance? There are probably good ones and chinese ones to choose from but a good cable running behind the board and in to the drive bay area the same route as the SATA cables for the drives go through would probably do it. The card could be powered from the SATA cables and/or (solely) from the PSU cables alike the Pixla’s mod.

Edit : if you have no problem running cables from the front of the case the optical drive openings could be changed to ”PCIe openings” 😄