I can't see wireless via a AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter

Question

description: Ethernet interface

       product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 02
       serial: 00:1e:68:cf:21:63
       size: 100Mbit/s
       capacity: 100Mbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.66 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s
       resources: irq:44 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:51010000-51010fff memory:51000000-5100ffff memory:51020000-5103ffff
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:22:69:73:58:c3
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath5k driverversion=3.0.0-12-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
       resources: irq:18 memory:55200000-5520ffff

• rfkill list all

  0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

Answer 1

after searching google for over 6 hours, with lots of dead end answers, my solution for getting the atheros ar242x / ar542x (compaq presario c762nr) wireless on my linux mint 13 maya new install was to install madwifi. I even tried ubuntu 2 years ago, with similar problems on this machine.

http://madwifi-project.org/