Atheros AR5BXB6: AR5006EX or AR5002G?

[ForestCat]

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... Please allow me to only mention Linux once here in saying that 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 a way in OSX to verify the true identity of the chipset? Something similar to lspci? System Profiler generates an exception when calling SPAirPortReporterUpdateDictionary...

 

Thanks again.

[ergosteur]

Try running an update-pciids on linux, and then lspci again.

what are the vendor and device ids?

Is the card PCI-E?

If the id is 168c:1014, the problem could be that IBM has not changed the pci-id of their cards, even though they changed the chip and architecture.

 

If it is PCI-E, then it has to be a 5006 or 5007, since the 5006 was the first to support PCI-E.

 

I have 2 AR5BXB6 cards, one is AR5BXB63=AR5007EG (AR2415), the other is AR5BXB6-M=Apple Airport Extreme, AR5006EXS (AR5424). Both are 168c:001c

 

Oddly enough though, lspci identifies the AR5007EG as:

Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter

And Windows says it could be AR5006X or AR5007EG.

 

The AirPort Extreme card is identified by Windows as AR5006X. However, I am able to connect to 802.11a networks, and it connects to my access point in 108Mbps (SuperG). The 5006X does not have SuperG support (SuperG is 5006-S), or PCI Express (PCIE is 5006E-)

ie. what I've figured out (with help from http://www.atheros.com/pt/bulletins/) is that

X=a/b/g

S=SuperG

E=PCI-E.

 

Try testing for those features, and compare them to the features advertised in the Atheros bulletins. Also, note that the 5002 is a two-chip solution for MiniPCI, and the 5006 is a one-chip for PCIE or MiniPCI.

 

Sorry, just noticed that you said Mini PCI Express. So it must be a 5006.

 

You have it working? Did you follow my guide at http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=33089? I can't seem to get the 5006EXS from Apple to work.

Edited November 14, 2007 by matt-hieu ergosteur