well, it appears that there are none of the madwifi drivers in the 3.8 /lib/modules/2.6.9/net
directory, specifically, ath.hal.o, ath_pci.o, and wlan.o

Looking in the 3.7 /lib/modules/2.4.27/net directory, you find those files as above (which, I believe that insmod loads upon boot of my 3.7)

So the next question is whether one should be able to remedy the problem by installing madwifi. Any takers out there?