Atheros 5xxx

Introduction
The Atheros 5xxx is a wireless chipset usually found in laptops. There are three ways of getting your wireless card working:
 * ath5k is a completely FOSS wireless driver for Atheros WLAN based chipsets. See also Atheros Ath5k Wireless Access Point.
 * ath9k is a completely FOSS wireless driver for Atheros IEEE 802.11n WLAN based chipsets.
 * MadWifi supports proprietary code (via HAL) but covers more chipsets and also supports the "master" mode (needed for building an access point).
 * ndiswrapper will use NDIS drivers for Microsoft Windows; They do not support packet injection and "master" mode.

Driver Support
Please add your devices below. The subsystem id and numeric pci id can be found using "lspci -nn".

Kernel Options (All installs)
If you intend to use the ath5k driver (Atheros 5xxx wireless cards support), you should configure your Kernel with the following options:

ath5k kernel driver
The ath5k kernel module (shown unselected in the kernel configuration above) supports many Atheros chipsets. It is currently under heavy development, written by the developers and is intended to replace MadWifi.

Refer to kernel patch below to add AR242x / AR542x [168c:001c] LED support (it is tested with Thinkpad X61 Lenovo, linux-2.6.39-gentoo-r3)

{{File|ath5kled-patch| diff -Naur olddrivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/led.c drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/led.c --- olddrivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/led.c	2011-05-19 13:06:34.000000000 +0900 +++ drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/led.c	2011-08-24 22:39:04.000000000 +0900 @@ -83,6 +83,8 @@ 	{ PCI_VDEVICE(ATHEROS, PCI_DEVICE_ID_ATHEROS_AR5212_IBM), ATH_LED(0, 0) }, /* Dell Vostro A860 (shahar@shahar-or.co.il) */ { ATH_SDEVICE(PCI_VENDOR_ID_QMI, 0x0112), ATH_LED(3, 0) }, +	/* AR242x AR542x */ +	{ PCI_VDEVICE(ATHEROS, PCI_DEVICE_ID_ATHEROS_AR5424), ATH_LED(3, 0) }, { } }; }}

Use command from linux source folder to apply the patch:

MadWifi
The MadWifi drivers provide support for a wide range of Atheros devices, including some of the 5xxx range. The madwifi-hal branch that used to be required for some hardware is no longer available.

ndiswrapper
If the Windows drivers from the card manufacturer don't work with ndiswrapper, try searching the ndiswrapper wiki (Hint: Try searching for the PCI ID).

Links

 * MadWifi official website
 * PCI ID database for Atheros (168c)
 * ath5k at linuxwireless.org
 * ath9k

Ath5k