ThinkPad 11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter

This is a WiFi Adapter that is installed in a Mini-PCI Express slot

Features

Chipset: Atheros AR5008 or Atheros AR5418
Integrated Mac Processor and Radio Chip: Atheros, unknown model
IEEE Standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (draft)
PCI ID: 168c:0024

Different chipsets?

It has been reported that different chipsets may be used by Lenovo for this controller. This may, however, be only an issue of outdated PCI IDs. To clarify, please update your PCI IDs and report the name of the chipset. On a T60 running OpenSuse 10.2, the following code does the job:

# update-pciids
# lspci|grep Atheros
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5418 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

If you get a different name for the chipset despite having the most current PCI IDs, please report it here! Note that, since pciids only translates numeric IDs to human-readable IDs, it is very unlikely (if not impossible) that the chip with PCI ID 0168:0024 gets annotated as different chipsets.

IBM Partnumbers

42T0825 [1]

Linux WiFi driver

There's now (04.04.07) added experimental support for the AR5008 chipset to a new branch in MadWifi. I have compiled this driver successfully, but it's still at an experimental stage, so no promises are given. Howto

There is an old ticket for this card at madwifi, #1001.

There is an new ticket for this card at madwifi-branch, #1243.

To install this driver, just checkout the branch madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13.

mkdir /tmp/madwifi
cd /tmp/madwifi
svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/branches/madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13/
cd madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13/
make
make install
*choose [r]
reboot

News fron the madwifi-branch:

*  milestone changed from version 0.9.x - progressive release candidate phase to version 0.9.4.
FYI: the madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13 branch has been merged to trunk 
(and the branch has been removed). If you don't want to wait until the next release (v0.9.4), 
you could go with a snapshot or checkout from trunk - just make sure that your code is >= r2360.

Until the madwifi driver stabilizes you might want to get the Windows driver from Lenovo's support site and use a recent version of ndiswrapper (>= 1.29). I've compiled a Howto for this card.

AR5418 is still too new?

If anyone is able to get the AR5418 to work with madwifi, please add your procedure for getting it to work - in the meantime, ndiswrapper works with the windows driver.

Update 10.06.2007 from Stevie:

I have the AR5418 chipset and with the snapshot release r2431 this chipset works (with wpa-psk). Just try it...

Timmsc:

A number of folks have reported getting errors while using recent versions of madwifi with Feisty on the T60p with the AR5418. When the NMI is received, the wifi dies. If anyone knows the solution, please elaborate.

Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b0 on CPU 0.
You have some hardware problem, likely on the PCI bus.
Dazed and confused, but trying to continue

wifi0: rx FIFO overrun; resetting
wifi0: rx FIFO overrun; resetting
wifi0: rx FIFO overrun; resetting

See the following threads and bug reports: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Hint:

There's a ticket on madwifi with a potential solution for the rx FIFO overrun problem.

Hardware switch

Some ThinkPads have a hardware switch that must be in the on position for the radio to work, regardless of driver state:

In addition to hard-switching the wireless card, the switch also generates an acpi event on transition from hi->lo and vice versa. It is however the same event in both directions.

ThinkPad 11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter