In November 2021 I heard from a correspondent who had several 3040s some of which had the CM389A fitted. He intended to retrofit CM389As to those that had come without WiFi. He did note that:
"... the unit is a bit finicky to reassemble, and one must pay close attention to the antenna cable routing in order to even close the unit."
Here's the standard fit CM389A in place.
Here's the inside of the case showing where the two antennas are located.
Here's a close up of one of the antennas.
If you've sourced some CM389A cards yourself I guess that experimenting with some antennas from a laptop might be a way to go? They are fitted with a similar style of antenna as they have been designed to be located in the laptop's lid behind the bezel. One issue might be in the lengths of the leads they come with.
In September 2021 I heard from Chris who pointed me at this report which states that the WiFi card works fine as a factory-fit item but does not work as an after-market add-on. As usual with such reports there is a certain amount of speculation as to what is going on, but no real facts. The report is on technicalhelp.de which is focused on support for standard Wyse products. Whether you get the same issues when running a non-Wyse OS is unclear. If you have any experience of this please email me the details using the link at the bottom of the page.
In October 2021 April provided me with a possible explanation for the above. She sent me two datasheets for the AW-CM389A. One was issued 2016/04/29 and for WiFi/Bluetooth said:
The host interface is SDIO v3.0 interface.......An independent, SDIO v3.0 is provided for the Bluetooth host interface. The Bluetooth subsystem presents a standard Host Controller Interface (HCI) via a SDIO and PCM for audio.
The other was issued on 2016/08/03 (last update to V0.4 on 2018/08/09) and for the WiFi/Bluetooth said:
The host interface is PCIe interface....... An independent, USB is provided for the Bluetooth host interface. The Bluetooth subsystem presents a standard Host Controller Interface (HCI) via a USB and PCM for audio.
Both datasheets just refer to the model as the AW-CM389MA. There is no section in either of them labelled 'ordering information' that usually provides the full part number which, one assumes, should distinguish between the two parts.
A supposition is that the person reporting the problems on technicalhelp.de may have inadvertently sourced a PCIe/USB version of the card.
The datasheet with an SDIO interface.
The datasheet with the PCIe interface.
I'm with April here who wrote:
I've never really understood quite why some manufacturers like to sell multiple products with the same model number like this...
Any comments? email me. Added October 2021