atheros wireless card trouble -- plugged into the wrong /dev device
 

i'm running Fedora Core 4 on an IBM T-20-2647-41U laptop; i've had to install alot of drivers but everything has worked for a long time.

using my Atheros AWLC 4030 PCMCIA wireless card has been a breeze for 6 months. after use, i stored my laptop for a couple months. when i got it running again, my wireless card refused to work.

when i pulled up network device control (NDC), the card wasn't even recognized. i pulled up hardware browser and found that the card was indeed recognized and had the correct driver (ath-pci) associated with it; however, an incorrect device was associated with it (eth1), one that NDC didn't recognize (the correct device which was always used was ath0). i tried to create a symbolic link linking ath0 and eth1, but they apparently don't exist in /dev, even though the programs say they are.

i am therefore stumped. how do i get my wireless card recognized as /dev/ath0 once more?

Please Help,
Dan

Are you sure that the Atheros card has not broken while in storage? If it hasn't, it's most likely that just at moment before you stored the computer you did some updates to your kernel or madwifi drivers. If you just hibernate (rather than power off) the computer it is possible that these changes date back a long time.

I recently rebooted my laptop and noticed that my Home wlan did not work anymore. After I while I found out that I had made some temporary network changes after last reboot 62 days ago. So the network did not work, but at first I had no clue why.

I'm not sure this will do anything, but try typing dhclient ath0 . (if you haven't done this already).