Atheros AR5BXB6: AR5006EX or AR5002G?

IBM/Lenovo Part#40Y7026, FRU# 39T5578

On a sticker on the board itself: AR5BXB6, Atheros Communications

Commonly known as Thinkpad 11a/b/g Wireless Adapter

MiniPCI Express

I have been all over the internet for days, in every mfg site, every wiki, every ebay sale I could find, and there is wildly conflicting info on this, and, of course, anybody on this forum already knows more about this than Lenovo tech support does...

This card is widely claimed to be an AR5006EX (AR5423), people are selling it all over ebay this way, thinkpad wikis & forums say so, and there are posts in this forum saying so. And that is why I bought one...

lspci -vv flags this card, in my Asus G1, as follows:

Ethernet Controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: IBM unknown device 058a

The AR5212 is an AR5002G, definitely NOT an AR5006EX!

The card works well in OSX86 10.4.7 w/ the 10.4.5 .kext

I'm trying to sort out some issues in other os's, I really need to know what this card is, once & for all. For those with Linux experience, am I right in assuming that lspci is reading the BIOS sig from the card itself? Could this info be wrong?

Is there another way (short of unsoldering the rf shield...) to verify the true identity of the chipset? Something similar to lspci? System Profiler in OSX86 generates an exception when calling SPAirPortReporterUpdateDictionary...

Thanks again.

 

The driver (edit in window device manager) on a thinkpad says : AR5416 don't know if that is what you are looking for.

Edit: http://www.atheros.com/news/xspan.html I guess. maybe.

 

Thanks for the reply. My understanding (I could be wrong...) is that Windows basically only knows what the .inf file tells it, as far as the name of the device goes. The .inf file, which is used to install a device driver, has a list of names, like Atheros AR5216, etc, which are cross-referenced to PCI bus info, device & vendor id's, which are cryptic, and don't generally tell us much about the actual chipset, etc. The Device ID is a clue, but in the online PCI database, it points to Atheros AR5212. The 5212 is not even a PCI Express chip, so none of this makes a damn bit of sense, unless this card is some kind of bastard child which misidentifies itself to the OS. One thing for sure is that the card seems to have enormous problems under Linux, even though Linux support of Atheros based wifi is generally very good. I wish someone could clear this up.

 

I was basing it on the driver's dll name. It seems from the page I linked before that the 5416 is a 5008 series with "pci interface" while the 5418 is the PCIe. My guess is they share a dll and that it would imply its a 5418. Which is in the 5008 family. But it is just a guess.

"
Baseband/MACs

*

AR5416 – with PCI host interface
*

AR5418 – with PCI Express host interface

" from the linked page

 

You know what is interesting is that I have the same FRU# but a different IBM Part #. Mine is 39T5569 / 41W1685. Mine uses AR5211.sys, and mine says AR5001X+ when I use Everest Ultimate Edition. However, if I look @ AR5211.inf it says AR5001X+ but also says AR5006EX in the list of names at the end of the file. I have not physically opened my laptop to physically confirm it, but I assume that perhaps the driver is just mislabeled? I called Lenovo once and they denied the possibility that I might've been given an old card.

EDIT: It's official(I think), you're using an AR5006EX. https://certifications.wi-fi.org/wbcs_ViewCertificate.php?product_id=4090

 

Funny I was reading your post not realizing it was you and then it sounded like a very similar problem! Ha!

Is your card 54Mbps or is it capable of 108Mbps? I'm looking at one for sale on eBay (AR5BXB6 as stated by seller) but it is listed as 108Mbps.

Turns out I've had quite a bit of trouble getting the Gigabyte card working.

 

I thought I would also add this:
http://madwifi.org/ticket/1001
Madwifi is working on it, but people have gotten it working via ndiswrapper.
Let me know how it goes and good luck!

 

Acaurora,

Very nice find. I hadn't seen that yet, it seems pretty authoritive.

MrFuzzemz,

I finally got a hold of someone at Atheros who presented some of my questions to their technical personnel who are apparently not reachable by phone. Some of the following may apply to your card as well. According to Atheros:

The reason that these cards all appear to the system as AR5212 is because the actual MAC portion of the chipset remains unchanged from the first generation wifi chipset. (I don't know why...)
Regarding IBM/Lenovo part#40Y7026, the card is manufactured by Ambit Microsystems for Lenovo. I was told that the cards are not actually manufactered by Atheros, only the chipsets. (Again, not sure why Atheros is silkscreened on to the pcd assembly, just repeating what I was told...)
I asked whether oem vendors could have modified versions of microcode on their flavors of the AR5BXB6, and he said no, since Atheros controls the chipset. ( Not sure then how the VendorID is created...)
In any case, this gentleman seemed fairly certain that, based on the info available to him, the AR5BXB6 in the Lenovo flavor is indeed an AR5006EXS/AR5424 based card.
MrFuzzemz, this would indicate extended range/superG capability.
What I can confirm is that w/ the Atheros ACU under XP, the SuperG option is selectable, i.e., not ghosted.
The card seems to work well under OSX86, with the odd exception being that when I was connected to an Airport Express at a client location, I was showing an active connection on the "Internal Ethernet" as well as the Airport devices, even though there was no wired ethernet. At home with the Netgear, this doesn't happen.
As for Linux, no joy. The bad news is that the word from Atheros is that there is currently no Madwifi support for PCIExpress, and it is not planned, at least in the propietary coded portions. ( I dunno... Don't some people have some versions of these pci express cards operational under madwifi?) I've read most of the trouble tickets that you have been nice enought to provide links to, and yes, this card, and the Z60T Thinkpad (which uses the card) are problem children in Linux, for sure...
In any case, I couldn't get past association & DHCP w/ mine. It would grab an IP, but I could not ping anything except locahost or the assigned IP.
Starting to try ndiswrapper, but after having compiled it, I'm getting the dreaded "Invalid Argument" during module load. Guess I know how I'm gonna be spending my weekend...

My head hurts.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a current vintage laptop w/ a high end gpu that "just works" under Windows, OSX, & Linux?...

 

Well since my last post I think the one that ships in the T60 is the regular AR5006EX, or whichever that is NOT Super G compatible. While mine, too, also shows Super A/G as an option under the ACU, and once I check it it stays there, when I restart it becomes unchecked again. I honestly dont know @.@....

 

Well I would just wait for Intel's Draft N card. Should be the same as the 3945 price wise, but better range, preformace and lower power consumption. I never had a problem with my Intel 3945 card. Super G imo is over rated.

 

Try "lspci -nn" instead of "lspci -vv" so you will see the numbers the card reports. Generally, "lspci" translates the VID, DID, SVID and SID numbers to text by a lookup table. This lookup table can be updated by issueing the command "update-pciids".

Have a look at http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=168c

 

Just a FYI to those looking for a 802.11a Turbo card, the Lenovo model 40Y7026 (got it at Amazon.com) is NOT a Turbo card and only is capable of 54m speeds. Do not waste your money.

Jim