AP6256: update wifi firmware under brcm/ from Xunlong repo

[sven-ola]

Short description

This update is optional. I do not think it will break lots of Armbian boards, but better save than sorry. Thus, this only overwrites fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin in the /lib/firmware/brcm/ subdir that needs to be activated manually or by board cfg anyhow (which is used here and there e.g. Bananapi-M4?) AP mode also works for me with the old version currently stored under /brcm/

Tests

Tested with Orange Pi RV2 with kernel 6.6 and 6.18 and hostapd as well as a minimal hostapd.conf

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=test
channel=1

Grabbed version strings from the *.bin files (see attached *.txt)

Root: rkwifi.txt
Old: brcm.txt
New: xunlong.txt

Commit comment

The Broadcom AP6256 chip is soldered on OrangePi RV2 board (and probably other Xunlong OrangePi boards). Without arguments, the bcmdhd.ko module loads /lib/firmware/{fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin,nvram_ap6256.txt} which at least with OrangePi RV2 has a non-working access point mode.

When loading the (newer) fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin from /lib/fw/brcm, the access point mode works. Also, for the Wifi AP6256, the files stored under /lib/firmware and /lib/firmware/rkwifi are the same.

While investigating this, I spotted a newer firmware on the Xunlong repo (refer to https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/firmware). This FW also works fine including the access point mode.

There may be older boards that required the older firmware under /lib/firmware. To use the FW under brcm/ you need to add module parameters e.g. to /etc/modprobe.d/${BOARD}.conf, for example

options bcmdhd firmware_path=brcm/ nvram_path=brcm/

Note the trailing slashes, those are required. Rest of the file names are determined and applied during wifi iface init.

• root and rkwifi/ Version: 7.45.96.61 (be7af2d@shgit) (r745790)
  CRC: 279731d4 Date: Tue 2020-02-11 11:55:51 CST
  Ucode Ver: 1043.20721 FWID: 01-a41d86bd

• brcm/ old Version: 7.45.96.91 (8d24bff@SYNA) (r745790)
  CRC: 38590a6e Date: Fri 2021-06-11 13:07:03 CST
  Ucode Ver: 1043.20730 FWID: 01-82a62ae

• brcm/ new Version: 7.45.96.203 (g23f64344)
  CRC: bd0824a0 Date: Tue 2024-04-16 11:23:17 CST
  Ucode Ver: 1043.20745 FWID: 01-4763f75d

If you run "strings fw*.bin | grep Version:", you see a longer string thats probably dash-speaparted compile flags. If you split them to lines, sort, and compare you see 6 missing and 5 additional flags from rkwifi to brcm (old) while only 2 missing and 1 added between brcm(old) and brcm(new). It's likely an update under brcm/ and maybe break something when overwriting /lib/firmware/fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin

[coderabbitai]

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