I have never had any reason to use these arguments before, so I don't know
whether they used to work.

I'm at a hotel where I am between two base stations with the same network ID.
One works.  The other, it seems, isn't connected to anything; if I get that
one, I can't send or receive any packets!

It SEEMS as though one ought to be able to constrain this by specifying bssid
or chan parameters through ifconfig.  In fact, if either is specified, the
last I hear is "wi0: link state changed to DOWN".  The network becomes
inactive until I use -chan and/or -bssid to clear the selection.

I can find no other way to specify a choice of base station.  It does appear
that disabling roaming (wiconfig wi0 -R 3) makes the connection stable if I
get the "good" base station.

Has anyone ever had cause to use these?

wi0 at pci2 dev 2 function 0: vendor 0x1260 product 0x3873 (rev. 0x01)
wi0: interrupting at irq 11
wi0: 802.11 address 00:20:e0:8d:15:f2
wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3874A(Mini-PCI)
wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.1.1), Station (1.5.6)
wi0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

(I am not sure whether it is feasible or wise to try to update this firmware,
IBM^WLenovo hasn't released any more recent updates that I'm aware of.)

-s