[Madwifi-users] Atheros 5212/Amilo L1310G won't associate - can I tell if the radio is on?

[David S. <dj...@bt...>]

Hello,

I'm using a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo L1310G machine which has a built-in
PCI Atheros AR5212 device. The radio is controlled separately with a
special button which turns it on and off in Windows. The default state
seems to be off and there's no option (eg., in the BIOS) to have it
permanently on.

I'm running the madwifi-ng drivers in FC5 (with a 2.6.16.11 kernel)
which almost work. However I'm having problems working out if the radio
is just off, or if I have a configuration error. The madwifi-ng modules
get successfully loaded at boot time:

ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.16.16 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413,
RF5413)
wlan: 0.8.4.2 (svn 1531)
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (svn 1531)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (svn 1531)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
wifi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
wifi0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps
24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
wifi0: H/W encryption support: WEP AES AES_CCM TKIP
wifi0: mac 7.8 phy 4.5 radio 5.6
wifi0: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BE traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BK traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 8 for CAB traffic
wifi0: Use hw queue 9 for beacons
wifi0: Atheros 5212: mem=0xc0200000, irq=19

and ath0 responds successfully to iwconfig:

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"xxxxxxxxx"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.417 GHz  Access Point:
Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xx   Security
mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-95 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

However, it won't associate to the access point. I was wondering if
someone could tell me if there's a way to distinguish the problem of the
radio just being off compared with some other error I may have made?

Quite a few Fujitsu-Siemens laptops seem to have software switches for
the radio. I've tried the fsam7440 and acerhk modules which both seem to
have had success operating this switch for other Fujitsu-Siemens models,
but unfortunately they don't seem to work for me.

Thanks in advance,

David