Atheros AR5008X AR5416 issues

[Warren Block]

This Atheros mini-PCIe card is in a Toshiba Satellite A215-S6820. 
Windows identifies it as an "Atheros AR5008X".  It's a b/g/n card with 
three antenna connections.  FreeBSD really hates the ACPI on this 
system, and insists on it being disabled.  I don't think that's the 
problem with the wireless card.

ath0: <Atheros 5416> mem 0xf8200000-0xf820ffff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci20
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: AR5418 mac 12.10 RF5133 phy 8.1

It sort-of works with a Linkys WRT54G b/g access point, but has some 
problems that keep it from working well.

Transfers are usually stalled, then will suddenly jump to 2MB/sec for a 
little while, then stall again with the output of bb hang messages. 
Access point LED shows long pauses.

kernel: ath0: bb hang detected (0x80), reseting
kernel: ath0: bb hang detected (0x80), reseting
kernel: ath0: bb hang detected (0x4), reseting
kernel: ath0: bb hang detected (0x4), reseting


The kernel includes GENERIC, so it has

   options AH_SUPPORT_AR5416

FreeBSD sat.wonkity.com 9.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT #0: Sun Sep 20 
22:42:33 MDT 2009 root at sat.wonkity.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SAT i386

wpa_supplicant.conf has just the ssid and psk.

rc.conf:   wlans_ath0="wlan0"
            ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 2290
 	ether 00:1b:9e:88:01:62
 	media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11g
 	status: associated
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
 	ether 00:1b:9e:88:01:62
 	inet 192.168.1.110 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
 	media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/36Mbps mode 11g
 	status: associated
 	ssid xxxx channel 6 (2437 Mhz 11g) bssid 00:40:10:10:00:03
 	regdomain 105 indoor ecm authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
 	deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 3:128-bit txpower 20 bmiss 7 scanvalid 450
 	bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7 roam:rate 5
 	protmode CTS wme burst roaming MANUAL

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA