For the love of God, is it even possible to make the Atheros ath.patch & updated HAL actually work?

*Sigh*

Hi again everyone..

I'm a novice BSD user who recently purchased an Atheros wireless card.  The
card is an "Engenius EMP 8602", 6th Generation Atheros AR5006 a/b/g chipset.
( http://www.netgate.com/product_info.php?products_id=279 for product
specs).

I have been racking my brain for DAYS trying to get Sam Leffler's (
http://people.freebsd.org/~sam ) ath.patch and updated HAL binary to work in
*ANY* version of FreeBSD.  First, I was told to do a MINIMAL install, then
cvsup to RELENG_6 and attempt to apply the ath.patch.  The patch fails at
least 7 hunks in various places in various files, 90% of the failed hunks
are in if_ath.c.  I was then told to

# cd /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev
# mv ath ath.original
# tar -xzvf ath_hal_20051212.tgz
# mv ath_hal_20051212 ath

to update the /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev directory.  Well lo and behold, the
bloody thing wont compile.. It spits out all kinds of errors from if_ath.c
about 'undeclared functions' and 'needing more parameters to function'

So I scrapped that installation and figured I'd give 7.0-CURRENT a try, in
hopes that maybe the patch was FINALLY applied to the kernel for me, but
nope..  It seems only tiny bits and pieces from the ath.patch have made it
into the actual kernel source.  The stock kernel source does not have enough
of the patch in it to make my wireless card work, and trying to apply the
patch to the 7.0 kernel is a complete failure as well.

So my question is; if the patch doesn't apply cleanly to either RELENG_6 nor
HEAD, then what the heck WILL it apply cleanly to?  This FreeBSD
installation is sitting here doing absolutely nothing because it's a
complete waste on my Laptop since there is NO wireless support for it at
all.  Yet it works just fine in Linux..



Does anybody have even the slightest clue when this code may actually make
it into the kernel sources?  Or better yet, does the patch cleanly apply and
compile for ANYBODY?  I posted this on bsdforums.org and people there can't
get it to compile either.. I e-mailed the author of the patch but I guess
he's way too busy and didn't get a chance to respond to me

I'm at my wits end here so any help would be appreciated, I really don't
want to have to just depend on Linux or Windows XP for this system when I've
fallen in love with everything OTHER than this major problem in FreeBSD :(

Thanks guys; anxiously awaiting any help
-Ryan