iwi won't switch on at boot

[Robin Becker]

I have an acer laptop with an intel 2200 wifi; when I had PCBSD 1.3 
installed I could boot from cold and have the wireless start up properly 
(it's using wpa with a hidden ssid ap). After I installed freebsd 6.2 I 
cannot get the wireless to come up on first boot. I seem to have to 
switch the wireless on and then reboot. I think under PCBSD is used to 
have to do something like
   sysctl dev.iwi.0.radio=1
in one of the startup scripts to make this work. Now however when I 
execute that I see a message saying that oid is read only. Is there some 
way to get this wifi starting properly again?

-- 
Robin Becker

various bits of information

$ uname -a
FreeBSD xxx.net 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 11:05:30 
UTC 2007     root at dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  i386
$ kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
  1   15 0xc0400000 70794c   kernel
  2    1 0xc0b08000 1adb8    linux.ko
  3    1 0xc0b23000 e1a8     if_iwi.ko
  4    2 0xc0b32000 2d60     firmware.ko
  5    1 0xc0b35000 2cf4     wlan_acl.ko
  6    1 0xc0b38000 59f20    acpi.ko
  7    1 0xc4f27000 4000     logo_saver.ko
$ pkg_info | grep iwi
iwi-firmware-2.4_7  Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 Driver Firmware
iwi-firmware-kmod-3.0_2 Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 Firmware Kernel Module

$ cat /boot/loader.conf
if_iwi_load="YES"
firmware_load="YES"
wlan_load="YES"
wlan_acl_load="YES"
wlan_wep_load="YES"
wlan_ccmp_load="YES"
wlan_tkip_load="YES"

messages
====== initial boot
Jun 10 08:53:01 xxx kernel: iwi0: <Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG> mem 0xb010
    1000-0xb0101fff irq 17 at device 4.0 on pci6
Jun 10 08:53:01 xxx kernel: iwi0: Ethernet address: 00:13:ce:a1:2e:8e
Jun 10 08:53:01 xxx kernel: iwi0: radio turned off

====== after switch pressed
Jun 10 08:55:17 xxx kernel: iwi0: radio turned on

====== after reboot
Jun 10 09:14:44 xxx kernel: iwi0: <Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG> mem 0xb010
    1000-0xb0101fff irq 17 at device 4.0 on pci6
Jun 10 09:14:44 xxx kernel: iwi0: Ethernet address: 00:13:ce:a1:2e:8e