I have read several threads about the Atheros AR2413-related chipset having problems with Linux, but I have never seen this particular problem described: SOMETIMES my laptop boots just fine, and at other times it fails to recognize the wifi chip: wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported' (HAL status 13). When this happens, I can reliably get Ubuntu to recognize the chip by booting into WinXP, letting XP connect to the wireless network, then rebooting into Ubuntu. Sometimes just rebooting Ubuntu gets it to work, but the XP boot works every time.
My system is an Acer Aspire 3502wLCi laptop. wifi chipset: Atheros AR2413
802.11bg NIC (as reported by 'lshw') Ubuntu 8.04 madwifi, ath_pci 0.9.4, ath_hal 0.9.18.0What would cause this erratic behavior? Was it the position of the stars when I was born? Any advice would be most appreciated.