I have an _old_ notebook running NetBSD 1.6 that I can run in ah-hoc mode.
This worked fine with my dell running FreeBSD and with the same card
type - Wavelan gold.

NetBSD-current on my thinkpad though cannot talk to it using either ath0
or wi0 (the same card above).

I know the wireless cards in both machines are working, since 
wiconfig -D finds other nearby access points (thought wiconfig ath0 -D
finds a lot more ;-)

In -current, wiconfig doesn't have all the options it did in 1.6 so
just about everything is set via ifconfig, and while it claims to be
in adhoc mode, wiconfig says it isn't.
[yes the keys do match ;-)]

$ wi0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ssid "NetBSD IBSS" nwkey *****
        powersave off
        bssid 02:02:2d:0b:78:32 chan 10
        address: 00:02:2d:0b:78:32
        media: IEEE802.11 autoselect adhoc (DS2 adhoc)
        status: active
        inet 192.168.62.2 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.62.255
        inet6 fe80::202:2dff:fe0b:7832%wi0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
$ wiconfig wi0
NIC serial number:                      [ 01UT01362918 ]
Station name:                           [  ]
SSID for IBSS creation:                 [ NetBSD IBSS ]
Current netname (SSID):                 [ NetBSD IBSS ]
Desired netname (SSID):                 [ NetBSD IBSS ]
Current BSSID:                          [ 02:02:2d:0b:78:32 ]
Channel list:                           [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ]
IBSS channel:                           [ 10 ]
Current channel:                        [ 10 ]
Comms quality/signal/noise:             [ 0 27 27 ]
Promiscuous mode:                       [ Off ]
Port type:                              [ 1 ]
MAC address:                            [ 00:02:2d:0b:78:32 ]

In 1.6 we see:

NIC serial number:                      [ 01UT01331412 ]
Station name:                           [ NetBSD WaveLAN/IEEE node ]
SSID for IBSS creation:                 [ NetBSD IBSS ]
Current netname (SSID):                 [ NetBSD IBSS ]
Desired netname (SSID):                 [  ]
Current BSSID:                          [ 00:00:00:00:00:00 ]
Channel list:                           [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ]
IBSS channel:                           [ 10 ]
Current channel:                        [ 10 ]
Comms quality/signal/noise:             [ 0 27 27 ]
Promiscuous mode:                       [ Off ]
Port type (1=BSS, 3=ad-hoc):            [ 3 ]
MAC address:                            [ 00:02:2d:06:84:55 ]

Note the 00:'s for BSSID and port type = 3 but we can't set that via
wiconfig in -current.

Anyone using adhoc mode in -current?

FWIW ath0 on the thinkpad claims to support hostap mode, but I
couldn't get wi0 on the old toshiba to see it.

--sjg