madwifi installed but my atheros wireless card is not seen

[lesander]

Dear all,
I am on fedora core 5, 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5, using kmod-madwifi-0.9.0-1.2.6.17_1.2174_FC5 and madwifi-0.9.0-1.lvn5.
I have a thinkpad t42p.

Till yesterday, I had my wireless working almost properly. I say Almost properly becuase I could only use my wireless connection without security i.e. no wpa or wep.
So in order to fix that I followed the following instructions http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Fedora_Core_5_on_a_ThinkPad_T43_(2686)# Wireless_LAN_Config
which claimed that the livna madwifi drivers have a bug which is why i was not able to use wpa or wep for wireless.
Unfortunately, after doing that my whole wireless is messed up. In fact I can no longer use wireless even without security.
I reinstalled the kernel and the madwifi & kmod-madwifi, but
situation did not improve.
Moreover, the gnome's NetworkManager applet is no longer in the panel; doing dmesg | grep ath
prints out a lot of messages:
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.16.16 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
ath_rate_sample: disagrees about version of symbol ath_hal_computetxtime
ath_rate_sample: Unknown symbol ath_hal_computetxtime
ath_rate_sample: no version for "ether_sprintf" found: kernel tainted.
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (0.9.0)
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol ath_rate_tx_complete
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_rate_tx_complete
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol _ath_hal_attach
ath_pci: Unknown symbol _ath_hal_attach
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol ath_rate_attach
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_rate_attach
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol ath_rate_newassoc
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_rate_newassoc
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol ath_hal_computetxtime
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_hal_computetxtime
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_rate_dynamic_proc_register
ath_pci: disagrees about version of symbol ath_hal_mhz2ieee
ath_pci: Unknown symbol ath_hal_mhz2ieee
...[cropped]

and the networkmonitor applet says that
"Please contact your system administrator to resolve the following problem:

SIOCGIFFLAGS error: No such device"

can someone please help me get back my wireless card...
I have spent way too much time on this.
Also if I do system-config-network and add a new wireless card, it does not recognize my wireless card. Before I had two options "Atheros " and then "Other wireless card"; now I have the latter only.
finally:

# cat /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-ath0
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=ath0
#HWADDR=00:05:4E:4A:FD:A0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=linux
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto


my