Add support for TP-LINK AX55 V1

For Developers
148

Is there any hope of TP-Link AX55 V1 support with the new version OpenWrt 25.12 ? Especially this version's support for ipq50xx

149

check this out. i was looking for ipq6018 and decided to also see the ipq5018 and saw this. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm64/boot/dts/qcom/ipq5018-tplink-archer-ax55-v1.dts

152

[TEST BUILD] Stage 3a initramfs — kernel boots, NAND/UBI working

Hi all, been working on a clean port and have a first test image to share.

What's working in this build:

  • Kernel boots on IPQ5018
  • SPI-NAND (128 MB) detected, all 16 OEM partitions visible in /proc/mtd
  • UBI attaches to rootfs partition
  • Serial console working (RX requires a small hardware fix — R102/R216 area, see earlier posts)

What's NOT working yet:

  • Ethernet — patch written and compile-verified, needs HW test (more below)
  • WiFi — later stage
  • Permanent flash install — later stage

The key discovery (real blocker explained):

The RTL8367S↔IPQ5018 link is 2.5G HSGMII (internal backhaul SerDes, not a user-facing port). The AX55 still has 5×1G RJ45 ports; this is just the internal trunk. The mainline rtl8365mb DSA driver only implements RGMII ext-port config — SGMII/HSGMII is declared in the capability bits but mac_config() is a no-op. That's why all previous attempts stalled.

The fix: I've ported Hauke Mehrtens' May 2022 patch series ("Add SGMII and HSGMII support to rtl8365mb") which never merged upstream due to firmware licensing concerns. In OpenWrt that's a non-issue — the identical GPL-2.0 8051 firmware blob (Sgmii_Init[1183]) already ships in target/linux/mediatek/files/drivers/net/phy/rtk/rtl8367c/rtl8367c_asicdrv_port.c. I've packaged it as rtl8367s-sgmii-firmware and the DSA patch cross-compiles clean on kernel 6.12 with zero warnings.

Download: https://github.com/kuncy7/openwrt-ax55-v1/releases/tag/v0.1-stage3a

SHA256: 338c32a8bbf6d8dbf944cc9de2cb2498ce92ecaf4abd1d9df238f339cafbd45b

To boot (nothing is written to flash):

  1. Set up TFTP server with the .itb file
  2. In U-Boot serial console:
tftpboot 0x44000000 openwrt-qualcommax-ipq50xx-tplink_archer-ax55-v1-initramfs-uImage.itb
bootm 0x44000000

Please report:

  • Full boot log
  • cat /proc/mtd
  • dmesg | grep -iE 'rtl|nand|ubi|eth'
  • Whether ip link shows any ethernet interfaces

Next step is stage 3b/3c (WAN + LAN with the RTL8367S DSA patch). Happy to share the patch for review too if anyone wants to look at it before I test on hardware.