i can confirm this behavior with the CM9 and a ferrari 4006. i had exactly the same thing happen. solaris sees the card (ifconfig reports an ath0) but scans report nothing. checked the antenna connections, a-ok. booted knoppix 5 and tried a scan and sure enough the kernel's seeing the card just fine, but its blind as a bat!
went out and bought a Netgear 511T PCMCIA card that also uses the atheros driver-- added the new cardbus driver and BAM, scan is detecting wireless nets again-- on ath1... ask it to scan ath0 (the CM9) and it shows nothing! so i called yellowbloc and got an RMA-- they're gonna replace the card free of charge. so i shipped it out today. i hope the next one works better! This message posted from opensolaris.org
