BE1400 terrible range, slow speeds and one of the radios is disabled. This is with only a single device connected

frank-w · May 3, 2025, 9:08am

oli:

i knew i added some patches manually
oli@DESKTOP-RA0V02P:~/openwrt$ ls package/kernel/mt76/patches/
002-use-tx_power-from-default-fw-if-EEPROM-contains-0s.patch
0152-cp-mtk-mt76-mt7996-config-rxfilter-to-drop-other-unicas.patch
wifi: mt76: mt7996: Use tx_power from default fw if EEPROM contains 0s · danpawlik/mt76@da5a863 · GitHub i think this one should fix the radio problem with power. dont know if those patches are in the latest snapshot, because those patches are really fresh.

Yes this is a patch for fixing the 6dbm issue,but also using the bpi eeprom file should fix it

When saving this file with the right filename (mt7996_eeprom_233_2i5i6i.bin) in the right path (should be /lib/firmware/mediatek/mt7996/) it should also fix it without patching the source and is the preferred way as patch above simply ignores eeprom and uses hw max which may not be good for hardware.

oli · May 3, 2025, 9:55am

thanks, then i’ll update the firmware file asap and remove the patch

frank-w · May 3, 2025, 10:28am

Have not tested by myself yet,but both were reported to fix the 6dm issue.

If this eeprom firmware way does not work we need to make sure firmware is loaded and applied as eeprom. But i see filename in mainline driver so i guess it is loaded also there.

oli · May 3, 2025, 10:37am

so for me i have no problems with that firmware, all seems to work as expected. but i dont know if i was affected at all

@58awards can you download that firmware file and put it in the directoy frank-w mentioned and test? you can use wget/curl or so via ssh

58awards · May 3, 2025, 8:46pm

I just checked and it’s currently set at fs.file-max = 402281

I’ll go ahead and increase it to see if it makes a difference. But as for anything else, everything was 100% stock when I pasted those logs as of OpenWrt SNAPSHOT, r29440-bf91381451

Since then the only change has been applying the EEPROM patch into /lib/firmware/mediatek/mt7996/ which unfortunately didn’t seem to change anything.

I see theres a new snapshot this morning, I’ll check into that and see if it makes a difference (with or without the patch).

EDIT: Small correction, I did install LuCI. But thats it.

UPDATE: flashed snapshot r29441-a0f45a4f3f and tried without and with the patch and still stuck at 6 dBm. It’ll allow selecting 7 dBm if the radio is disabled, but when it’s enabled it only allows upto 6 dBm.

frank-w · May 4, 2025, 7:56am

Do you see a message in dmesg that this file was loaded?

Const is used here:

github.com

frank-w/BPI-Router-Linux/blob/6.15-rc/drivers/net/wireless/mediatek/mt76/mt7996/eeprom.c#L47


      
          				return MT7992_EEPROM_DEFAULT_INT;
          			if (dev->var.fem == MT7996_FEM_MIX)
          				return MT7992_EEPROM_DEFAULT_MIX;
          			return MT7992_EEPROM_DEFAULT;
          		}
          	case 0x7990:
          	default:
          		switch (dev->var.type) {
          		case MT7996_VAR_TYPE_233:
          			if (dev->var.fem == MT7996_FEM_INT)
          				return MT7996_EEPROM_DEFAULT_233_INT;
          			return MT7996_EEPROM_DEFAULT_233;
          		case MT7996_VAR_TYPE_444:
          		default:
          			if (dev->var.fem == MT7996_FEM_INT)
          				return MT7996_EEPROM_DEFAULT_INT;
          			return MT7996_EEPROM_DEFAULT;
          		}
          	}
          }

And called here

github.com

frank-w/BPI-Router-Linux/blob/6.15-rc/drivers/net/wireless/mediatek/mt76/mt7996/eeprom.c#L165


      
          	return true;
          }
          
          static int
          mt7996_eeprom_check_or_use_default(struct mt7996_dev *dev, bool use_default)
          {
          	u8 *eeprom = dev->mt76.eeprom.data;
          	const struct firmware *fw = NULL;
          	int ret;
          
          	ret = request_firmware(&fw, mt7996_eeprom_name(dev), dev->mt76.dev);
          	if (ret)
          		return ret;
          
          	if (!fw || !fw->data) {
          		dev_err(dev->mt76.dev, "Invalid default bin\n");
          		ret = -EINVAL;
          		goto out;
          	}
          
          	mt7996_eeprom_fixup_tx_power(dev, fw->data);

So you should not see the “invalid default bin” message

58awards · May 4, 2025, 5:45pm

dmesg | grep "Invalid default bin", returned nothing, also skimmed through the dmesg output manually and nothing jumped out. So I assume thats a good thing.

Though I am still stuck as 6 dBm.

EDIT: So far this is literally the only image I have found that seems to work correctly. BPI-R4_MLO_RC1_mm

EDIT2: So after more testing, everything does function in that rom…but whoa is the range absolutely terrible. I was about 15ft away and my DL speed dropped to around 120Kb/s…