Atheros (ath) MSI wireless embedded chipset fails to attach on 7.0-STABLE

[Alexander Sack]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Manolis Kiagias <sonic2000gr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alexander Sack wrote:
>>
>> Hello:
>>
>> I have installed FreeBSD-7.0-amd64 stable on my new AMD X2 Turon based
>> notebook, a MSI-1710A (GX710Ax) which has a generic embedded
>> controller.  During boot up I notice that ATH complains with:
>>
>> ath_rate: version 1.2 <SampleRate bit-rate selection algorithm>
>> ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
>> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xfd7f0000-0xfd7fffff irq 16 at device 0.0
>> on pci2
>> ath0: Reserved 0x10000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0xfd7f0000
>> ath0: [MPSAFE]
>> ath0: [ITHREAD]
>> ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
>> device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
>>
>> HAL status 13 from the header file seems to indicate that the
>> 7.0-STABLE driver doesn't support my hardware revision.  Here is my
>> pciconf -l output:
>>
>
> Maybe you could try compiling a kernel with a newer hal. This is the kind of
> hack we use on the eeepc. Have a look at this:
>
> http://nighthack.org/wiki/EeeBSD

Thank you SO much for this link.  That's EXACTLY what I want to do
because I realize that this is a HAL problem.  I've been searching
like MAD where I could get an updated binary HAL for this chipset
(PCIe based).

Let me give this a try,

-aps