Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG iwi(4) card stopped working in 8-stable

[Alexey Dokuchaev]

On Sat, Oct 06, 2012 at 03:12:58AM +0700, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 07:02:26AM -0700, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> > On 5 October 2012 05:38, Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe at nsu.ru> wrote:
> > > Since this card gave me lots of troubles over the past, any one can
> > > recommend a decent mini-pci replacement?  It looks like ath(4) chips
> > > are currently best supported. [...]
> > 
> > AR5416 or AR9220 will be fine. Even an AR9160 will be fine.
> 
> OK, but shall I give predilection towards one of them, or they're all
> pretty much the same?

Today I've revisited this old topic and found that similar question was
asked before on ath9k-devel at lists.ath9k.org [1].  I will quote some parts
of it here (and thus answer my own question) for the sake of history.

  Gen 1 - AR5008:
  AR5416+AR5122 - 2x2 dual band, PCI
  AR5416+AR5133 - 3x3 dual band, PCI
  AR5418+AR5133 - 3x3 dual band, PCIe

  Gen 2 - AR9001:
  AR9160+AR9104 - 2x2 dual band, PCI
  AR9160+AR9106 - 3x3 dual band, PCI

  Gen 3 - AR9002:
  AR9220 - 2x2, dual band, PCI
  AR9280 - 2x2, dual band, PCIe

[We know that] the AR9002 is a single chip solution, likely reducing cost,
power and size. But is there any improvement to radio functionality or
other features?

Answer (by Luis R. Rodriguez):

Having a single chip itself yields a lot more benefits than that.  Since
things are closer together it also means less complexity on overall
programming.

I recommend the single chip families, and specificaly AR9280 is a great
candidate as its dual band and uses PCI-E.  From a software perspective
Atheros dedicates more of its own resources for testing our newer chipsets,
the newer gernation 802.11n chipsets.  AR9001 didn't get formal testing
but the AR9002 did.  Now its AR9002, in the near future it will be AR9003
and so on.

./danfe

[1] http://ath9k-devel.ath9k.narkive.com/GqjxAbUB/ar-chipset-differences