A while back I tried the more recent kernels (non-legacy) and noticed these issues. Back then I didn't have the possibility to investigate further and I just ended up forcing the kernel back to old legacy kernel. This time around I have the time to actually troubleshoot more, so here we go.
When I last updated everything, the kernel got updated from 6.1.104-legacy-sunxi64 to 6.6.75-legacy-sunxi64, the immediate thing I noticed was that the WLAN did get detected. There is a thread about missing wifi with a linked PR, but either that fix hasn't landed in the 6.6.x kernel or something else is wrong.
The other issue is that the 6.6.x kernel seems to be very unstable. Having zram turned on will cause the system to crash within minutes from startup. Disabling zram makes the system more stable, but eventually there is a crash. The reason why I was looking at zram was due to the swapper mention in this message I got on the serial console. Note that the output is slightly corrupted due to my extra shoddy serial console that I cobbled together for emergency access.
[ 651.303088] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000ec9
[ 651.311994] Mem abort info:
[ 651.314808] ESR = 0x0000000096000006
[ 651.318589] EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL),HR
bits
[ 651.323937] SET = 0, FnV = 0
[ 651.327007] EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[ 651.330202] FSC = 0x06: level 2 translation fault
[ 651.335153] Data abort info:
[ MLi� ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000006, ISS2 = 0x00000000
[ 651.343601] CM = 0, WnR = 0, Tb= 0
[ 651.348705] GCS = 0Kzٕɱ= 0, DirtyBit = 0, Xs = 0
[ 651.354076] user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp=0000000043760000
[ 651.360576] [0000000000000ec9] pgd=0800000043c45003, p4d=080000004,SbՑ0800000043af6003, pmd=0000000000000000
[ 651.371253] Inter[X
* Oops: 0000000096000006 [#1] SMP
[ 651.376843] Modules linked in: lz4hc lz4 zram zsmalloc binfmt_misc nls_iso8859_1 rtl8xxxu mac80211 snd_soc_hdmi_codec cfg80211 rfkill libarc4 polyval_ce polyval_generic cdc_acm sunxi_cir r_ephy sunxi_ac200
[ 651.417619] CPU: 1 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Tainted: G C $rrjbsunxi64 #1
[ 651.426311] Hardware name: BigTreeTech CB1 (DT)
[ 651.430848] pstate: 60000005 (nZCv daif -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[ 651.437822] pc : n
K}}}0x18/0xa4
[ 651.442473] lr : do_idle+0x38/0x270
[ 651.445975] sp : f�0
[ 651.449291] x29: ffff800081cbbe10 x28: 0000000000000000 x27: 0000000000000000
[ 651.456445] x26: 0000000000000000 x25: 000000000004: 0000000000000000
[ 651.463595] x23: 0000000000000000 x22: 0000000000000000 x21: 000j
[ 651.470746] x20: 0000000000000001 x19: 00000000000000L8: 0000000000000000
[ 651.477901] x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15: 00000000035ffbb0
[ 651.485055] x14: 000000000000028b x13: ffff8000810dde30 x12: ffff800081a29af8
[ 651.492206] x11: 0000000000000001 x10: 00000000000009a0 x9 : ffff800081cbbd50C[ 651.499359] x8 : ffff0000020a6c00 x7 : ffff00003fd81340 x6 : ffff000003504280
[ 651.506510] x5 : 00000000410fd030 x4 : 0000000000000ec1 x3 : 0000000000000j
[ 651.513638] x2 : ffff8000817f42c0 x1 : ffff8000817f42c0 x] Code: 913b0084 d000bae2 910b0042 aa0203e1 (f8607883)
[ 651.546301] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
[ 651.551024] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!
[ 651.557741] SMP: stopping secondary CPUs
[ 651.561666] Kernel Offset: disabled
[ 651.565150] CPU features: 0x0,00000008,00020000,0000420b
[ 651.570457] Memory Limit: none
[ 651.MӪ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task! ]---
I'll keep the system in this state for a while and figure out a better serial console so that I can collect more clean data. The board is in a printer and is in a bit awkward location for more conventional troubleshooting.