Atheros wireless card causing problems with 10.6

[iYassin]

I hackintoshed a Lenovo ThinkPad T410, Core i5-520M, 2GB RAM, Nvidia NVS3100M. I got OS X 10.6.6 installed (with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]/[url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]) and so far, everything is running nice, but the ThinkPad has got an Intel 6200 Advanced-N wireless card built in, which is not supported by OS X. I did now turn it off in the BIOS and put an Atheros AR5418/5133 wireless card into the WWAN miniPCIe slot. Generally, it's supported OOTB by OS X and it is working, but not really smooth - there are some problems when using it:

- Sometimes, the computer just freezes during boot when the WiFi connection is established.

- Mostly, I can use the computer for one or two minutes, and even browse the web or download some files from my server - then it freezes and I have to restart it.

- I can make the computer freeze instantly by using the AirPort menu (-> which makes the computer scan for wireless networks), the AirPort control panel or by accessing the "AirPort" info page in the System Profiler.

- Sometimes, the computer gets a kernel panic instead of freezing - but they don't contain much more info than some memory addresses.

 

I really don't know where the problem is. There are no hints in the console or somewhere else, the computer just freezes when using the wireless card. The card itself is working fine (checked that with an Ubuntu live CD). Changing the card against an original Apple Airport Extreme is not an option as the ThinkPad has a BIOS whitelist for WiFi cards and the mentioned Atheros card is the only one contained in the whitelist aside from Intel cards (and an unsupported one from Realtek).

 

Can you tell me how to get the wireless card working without the problems mentioned above? This would be really great...

 

Thanks in advance,

 

iYassin

[iYassin]

Well, right now, the wireless connection is working. I did screw up my IO80211Family.kext this afternoon, so I booted up in safe mode, restored the original kext, ran Kext Utility and rebooted in verbose mode. The computer did freeze after the message "AirPort: Link Down on en1: unspecified reason: 0" and then "ATHR: unknown locale: 60", but these two do also show up if the computer does boot successfully. After freezing, I turned the computer off and booted again - and now, it's working. I'm online for half an hour now and have been pinging my server - and the card didn't make the computer freeze. I'm typing this post from the T410 connected via Wifi right now. But I'm sure that it will freeze again if I reboot the computer now.

Obviously it's possible that the wireless card is working without making the computer freezing - so does anybody have an idea what I could do to get it working like now permanently?

 

I'm even able to access the AirPort info in System Profiler now. The person who sold the card to me told me it would be an Atheros AR5418/5133 chipset on it, but System Profiler tells me the following:

- Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x33)

- Firmware: Atheros 5416, 2.1.14.5

- Locale: Unknown:

- Country Code: <empty, it says nothing here>

The info it gives me for "Type" is quite confusing for me - because if I use DPCIManager to get my wireless card's PCI ID, it tells me "168C:0024 - Atheros Communications - AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter" - but System Profiler shows "0x168C, 0x33" and AR5416 chipset - why don't the two applications give the same info on the wireless card?