Hi all.. Novice user having woes getting Atheros card up in FreeBSD 6.0

[resonant evil]

Hi guys.. I made a post at bsdforums.org about a problem I am having
getting my Atheros card working, but not too many people frequent that
forum..  Instead of rehashing everything I have done I guess I will
link to the topic:

http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38562

The LINK to my exact wireless card is in the first post of that
topic.. It is a Senao NMP-8602 a/b/g Atheros card..  I have it working
no problems on Windows (blech), and my network at home is running
WPA2+AES.

What I have done so far:

Followed the handbook through installing the system to configuring the kernel

I copied the GENERIC file to a MYKERNEL file.  (The kernel config
file) I edited it, and added

device ath
device ath_hal
device ath_rate_sample
device wlan_wep
device wlan_ccmp
device wlan_tkip

to the file.  I then proceeded to /usr/sbin/config MYKERNEL, and 'cd
../compile/MYKERNEL'.  I did a 'make depend' , 'make' , 'make install'
all without a hitch, no compiling problems.. and before rebooting into
the new kernel I tweaked my /boot/loader.conf file:

su-2.05b# cat loader.conf
agp_load="YES"
ntfs_load="YES"
sound_load="YES"
snd_driver_load="YES"
wlan_wep_load="YES"
wlan_tkip_load="YES"
wlan_ccmp_load="YES"


So I rebooted, and the new kernel booted no problem.  However when the
system was starting up and all of the text was flashing by I still saw
no sign of an ath0 device.. So I logged in and tried doing a 'kldload
if_ath' and it said "File already exists" so I thought that meant it
was loaded.. Just for fun I tried a 'ifconfig ath0 up' but that just
spit out "ifconfig: interface ath0 does not exist" and now I'm really
starting to get nervous :(

One of the replies I got a guy told me to edit a
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file to input all the information from my
home network like WPA key and stuff, but that file doesn't exist on my
system!  (wpa_supplicant is installed though) ..  Here were his exact
directions

Quote: "Edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to include all the wireless
details of your network (SSID, use WPA, WPA passphrase, etc).

 Edit /etc/rc.conf to add ifconfig_ath0="WPA DHCP"
 Edit /etc/rc.conf to add wpa_supplicant_enable="YES"

 Run /etc/rc.d/netif ath0 start to bring up the ath0 interface, start
wpa_supplicant, establish the link to the access point, and grab the
IP info via DHCP. This step will be done automatically at boot based
on the above rc.conf entries."

But will that really bring up the ath0 device even though 'ifconfig
ath0 up' yielded a 'interface ath0 does not exist' ?

And I have no /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file for some reason, and no
clue how to create one from scratch, what should I do?  I need to do
WPA2+AES for my network

Thank you so much guys, I'm at a brick wall and appreciate help ASAP
These mailing lists is all a novice user like me can count on because
theres no way to be this detailed on IRC

Thanks again
-Ryan