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 This may, however, be only an issue of outdated PCI IDs.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

For native Linux support, the "madwifi" driver can be used. Here's the latest word regarding work on supporting the ar5008/ar5418 chipset:

*  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.

There is a howto, which describes the procedure for getting the snapshot to work.

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

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

Using the Windows Driver in Linux

If you have a weak stomach for pre-release software, you can always use "ndiswrapper" (>= 1.29) to wrap the Windows driver supplied by Lenovo. This isn't as bad as you think. It does work like a charm, but you may have problems if you're using a 64 bit kernel. Here's the howto. Here's the Howto.

Problems/Bugs?

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