I am extremely happy that after far too long fighting build systems, I have managed to make #nixwrt compile the 80211 subsystem and ralink wifi drivers from linux 5.8.something via the linux-backports project, and the resulting modules do actually load into the 5.4.64 kernel on the target device

I resorted to turning config options on and off randomly at a few points - there is plenty of cleanup yet to do before this can be merged into main

https://github.com/telent/nixwrt/pull/12

Not only do the modules load, but hostapd runs and I can see the network from my android phone. Yay me!

(No screenshot because said android phone seems to have lost the ability to perform that task. Knew I should have unlocked/rooted it before starting to use it for anything important)