A temporary fix for Nanopi NEO4 wifi "device not ready"

[Sun Xuan]

I used both buster and ubuntu images (Armbian_5.91_Nanopineo4_Debian_buster_default_4.4.179_desktop.img    and    Armbian_5.90_Nanopineo4_Ubuntu_bionic_default_4.4.179_desktop.img), both have no wifi, only show "device not ready". So I extracted firmware from official friendly desktop image and unzip to /lib/firmware/rkwifi/ and wifi works. I'm a newbie and hope this could be fixed properly soon.

 

For those new to linux like me, download the attachment, extract everything to /lib/firmware/rkwifi/, reboot and wifi should be there.

ap6212.zip

[Igor]

Last time when I was testing those boards, WiFi was working out of the box. Strange. Did you use images from official download locations?

[Sun Xuan]

18 hours ago, Igor said:

Last time when I was testing those boards, WiFi was working out of the box. Strange. Did you use images from official download locations?

Yes, downloaded from https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-neo4/, tried both latest stable buster and bionic image.  When I typed dmesg it showed that it was looking for fw_bcm43438a1.bin in /lib/firmware/rkwifi/, but only fw_bcm43438a0.bin was there.

 

I also checked the github repo https://github.com/armbian/firmware/tree/master/rkwifi, no fw_bcm43438a1.bin in there. Actually it can be found in /lib/firmware/ap6212/, but it seemed that the system was not looking into that position.

[Igor]

8 minutes ago, Sun Xuan said:

I also checked the github repo https://github.com/armbian/firmware/tree/master/rkwifi, no fw_bcm43438a1.bin in there. Actually it can be found in /lib/firmware/ap6212/, but it seemed that the system was not looking into that position.

There is a mess with this firmware ... perhaps we only need to adjust this patch: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/patch/kernel/rk3399-default/adjust_wireless_firmware_path.patch

 

... or rather make a copy/link from ap6212 -> rkwifi because it is highly possible we have different chips on the same board model.

[GeorgeP]

On 8/29/2019 at 4:24 PM, Igor said:

There is a mess with this firmware ... perhaps we only need to adjust this patch: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/patch/kernel/rk3399-default/adjust_wireless_firmware_path.patch

... or rather make a copy/link from ap6212 -> rkwifi because it is highly possible we have different chips on the same board model.

 

I've just come across this same problem.

 

I copied the two files 'fw_bcm43438a1.bin' and 'fw_bcm43438a1_apsta.bin' (I'm not sure if that second one is needed) from /lib/firmware/ap6212/ to /lib/firmware/rkwifi/ and rebooted and the wifi now works OK.

 

My board is very much a 'test bed' at the moment so I'm happy to test any possible fixes.

 

George