In message <200012272019.OAA24491@guild.plethora.net>, Peter Seebach writes:

>>Could be that the card's internal firmware crashed.
>
>I have support for this; Intersil told me that I may need newer firmware
>to use ad-hoc mode.

In bss mode, there are frequent link-level messages to (and maybe from) 
the card; it may be that these act as a watchdog timer, thereby masking 
the problem that leads to the crash.

		--Steve Bellovin