Problem with Toshiba L300 wireless interface

[john <john og co nz>]

This may not be the appropriate list but ...

I have a Toshiba L300 (bought in NZ) and the wireless has never worked
under OpenSUSE 11.0.
After googling about the problem, I followed the advice of one site and
installed madwifi modules using Yast2 from the madwifi OpenSUSE 11.0
repository, and I blacklisted the ath5k module.
 
dmesg reveals:
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:03:00.0 to 64
wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported'
(HAL status 13)

ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:03:00.0 disabled

Comments:
1. lspci reveals that the wireless chipset is Atheros AR242x (not the
AR5210 etc expected).
    It is located at 03:00.0 and the numeric stamp for the AR242x is
168c:001c
2. The device (wifi0, or ath0, or wlan0) never gets created.
3. Might ACPI be contributing to the problem?
4. Is the AR242x designation a maverick?

Can anyone shine light on this?

John O'Gorman