The limited set of wireless devices that were supported were done so by a reverse-engineered driver. For a good portion of its initial history, Broadcom devices were either entirely unsupported or required the user to tinker with the firmware.
5.4 Interfaces swapped with broadcom-wl.5.3 Device with broadcom-wl driver not working/showing.5.2 Device inaccessible after kernel upgrade.5.1 Setting broadcom-wl in monitor mode.