Built in Thinkpad T61p wifi AR5212 802.11abg NIC does not work!

yamagami · 05-28-2008, 07:53 AM

I have the strangest of problems and its driving me nuts for days now.
I've got a brand new Thinkpad T61p laptop with the AR5212 802.11abg NIC internal wifi card:

#lshw -C network (note the width is 64bits)
. .

Code:

description: Wireless interface
       product: AR5212 802.11abg NIC
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wifi0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:1f:e1:49:1e:d7
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath_pci ip=192.168.1.105 latency=0 module=ath_pci multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

. .

I've got Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy AMD64 installed. All works brilliantly EXCEPT the wifi card.
The strange thing is that when I attach a PCMCIA atheros card it works great!

The card's lshw output is (note the width: 32bit)

Code:

description: Wireless interface
       product: AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:16:00.0
       logical name: wifi1
       version: 01
       serial: 00:90:c7:7a:53:ca
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath_pci ip=192.168.1.105 latency=168 maxlatency=28 mingnt=10 module=ath_pci multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

I've so far:
Done my research before posting here.
Tried it on Gutsy 64, Gutsy (both live cd).
Tried recompiling madwifi and wpa_supplicant from source
Tried setting it up manually without network manager.
Tried Wicd.
Tried pulling my hairs out one by one.
Tried taking the access point off WPA to WEP.
Tried making the access point open.

My other laptop, a Toshiba M55 with internal intel wifi card (ipw2200) works great. The thinkpad's wifi also works great on windows XP.

When I was using network manager the syslog seemed ok, but eventually times out the connection : association took too long (>120s) wsa the complaint.

Is there a 64bit version of madwifi i can get? Is there any significant that one card's width is 64 bit (and doesnt work) and one is 32 bit (and does work)? Is there anything else I can try?

Appreciate any help,
Harel

yamagami · 05-28-2008, 08:17 AM

Perhaps posting in Linuxquestions is enough to solve a problem.
Minutes after my post, I got the latest madwifi from svn, recompiled that and the wpa_supplicant against it again.
And - it works!
I even restored network manager - all works a treat now!!!