What? first you say "The ath9k module was loading during installation", then you say "I see a ath9k_common and ath9k_hw module loading in the installed system, but not with iso"

please be more clear about what's going on!

also "couldn't bring up" ? what errors or messages do you get?

"first you say "The ath9k module was loading during installation", then you say "I see a ath9k_common and ath9k_hw module loading in the installed system, but not with iso""

These are three separate modules, though I realized the other two were only in the current kernel from the Arch repos. Downgrading back to the same kernel from the install doesn't load the other two either, but internet still works. The remaining differences in modules don't have anything obvious to me that's related to wireless, but I attached a file listing all of those modules.

On booting after the install I have wlan0 showing up with both iwconfig and ifconfig, but not booting off the usb image. Trying "ifconfig wlan0 up" outputs "wlan0: unknown interface: No such device".

try one of the archlinux-2010.04.19* images from http://build.archlinux.org/isos/, they use 2.6.33 instead of 2.6.32

Still no wireless device with the new iso

@Andy
When you boot with the CD, do you find the following line in the output of dmesg?
phy0: Failed to initialize wep: -2
I think that my issue is the same as yours, except that I'm using a
different card, a RaLink RT2500.

can you guys try the new 2010.05.16 images from http://build.archlinux.org/isos/ ?
these include a fix which should resolve this issue

My wireless works beautifully with the latest build (i686 netinstall).

Thanks.
Andy, can you confirm?

Looks like it's working now here too, tested with the i686 netinstall as well.

awesome. time for me to push these images out to our users!