Wireless problem in opensuse 11.1

[ahorseahorse]

my pci network device uses the ath5k driver and i think that it's the driver that is causing this issue. i've tried the ndiswrapper and madwifi based workarounds without any luck.

for the ndiswrapper workaround i used the netathrx.inf and athrx.sys driver files (gotten from the lenovo site). i installed them fine from within the containing folder using the ndiswrapper -i netathrx.inf command. then i confirmed that the driver was installed (ndiswrapper -l) and finally initialized ndiswrapper with modprobe ndiswrapper. these steps went fine. however, when it came to configuring a new wireless device (which i did prior to the initialization step) in the network setup manager things got a little dicey. i followed the instructions given here:

Ndiswrapper - openSUSE

after restarting networkmanager with rcnetwork restart nothing changed - i was still connecting with a very slow connection speed and networkmanager was showing the ath5k_pci driver as still being used.

after black listing the ath5k driver by iserting the blacklist link in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist it still wouldn't work. in fact, this time it wouldn't even connect.

from this point i spent several hours trying several variations on the many instructions i had read over all without any luck.

can anyone help steer me back in the right direction?

ps. i'll document what i tried with madwifi tomorrow.