Subject: Pimping airport on older macs to support Air drop in Lion
I recently was disappointed to find that neither my early 2008 imac nor macbook pro support airdrop.
(Monday's news had Apple's list of supported mac models, but as usual, no info on specific card models.)
A japanese site reports that the following cards work:

The cards that support AirDrop by default:
• Broadcom BCM94322MC, BCM94322HM8L
• Atheros AR5BXB112, AR5BXB92, AR5BHB92, AR5B93
  (And sounds like Atheros AR5B95 would work if AirPortAtheros40.kext edited to add DevID = 0x002b. Ditto for AR5BXB72 if edited for DevID = 0x0024.)
  
  Cards that do not support AirDrop:
• Broadcom BCM94321MC, BCM94312MCG, BCM94312MCAG, BCM94311MCG

I'm in the process of buying a broadcom card off ebay and will attempt to install as soon as it arrives. An install video is available on youtube: Core Duo 15in MacBook Pro Airport Card Replacement
(There's an old illustrated article here on that card swap/upgrade from Feb. 2007. Of course Lion doesn't support Core Duo CPUs.)
If any one else has any input on this topic it would be appreciated.
Regards, Richard"

If anyone else finds a cheap/commonly available AirDrop supported card, send a note. (In the past OEM apple card models (broadcom N, etc) were under $50 list, some others were less. Several years ago after 802.11N was first adopted, there were many posts here on compatible cards but there's newer/other options now I'm sure.)

There's some photos of an iMac takeapart/removing the Airport card in the pix of the article on iMac eSATA Card Install/Mod and for (2006/7) Core Duo mini owners that swapped in a Core2Duo CPU, there's pix of the Airport card in the article on 2006-2007 Mac Mini (mini-PCIe) SATA Card Install/Mod. And of course there's the iFixit take-aparts.

  

"Firmware Release 2.01.06 -26 (8/3/2011)
This update applies to firmware release 2.0 and higher. Please note that release 2.0 is not reversible and replaces your MioNet remote access interface with the new WD 2go free remote access technology. Read firmware release information carefully before upgrading.

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Resolved issue with incorrect Japanese language translations

Other updates included. Please see Release Notes for details."

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