8BitDo Firmware Updater in Wine

8bitdofirmwarelinux.md

This is about running 8BitDo's Firmware Update tool for Windows in Wine. It can be used for updating newer 8BitDo devices that may not be supported by fwupd on Linux.

This tool needs Segoe UI Symbol font, on Arch this font is provided by ttf-ms-win10-auto package. For other distributions there is install script.

You will have to let Wine access device's HID interface for updating firmware, something like this should work for 8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/71-8bitdo-boot.rules

# 8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth Controller's boot HID interface
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3208", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2dc8", TAG+="uaccess"

# 8BitDo Ultimate BT receiver's HID interface
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3109", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2dc8", TAG+="uaccess"

You might need to change product IDs depending on your device (lsusb prints vendor and product IDs)

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Disable SDL mode in winebus because it prevents firmware updater from accessing the device, can be done through Wine registry.

wine regedit

add DWORD value of 0 named "Enable SDL" at HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\winebus

Can be re-enabled after updating firmware (set the "Enable SDL" value to 1 or just remove it).

Shutdown wine server to save and apply registry changes: wineserver -k

Updating the controller works only in manual mode (press LB+RB and connect the controller through USB cable, then select appropriate device)

USB wireless dongle should be detected by the tool when controller is not connected.

Many, many thanks for this. Really, this is very important to me, I don't want to use Windows for this kind of stuff (or ANY kind of stuff, in fact).

This worked for me using the 8BitDo RetroKeyboard offline updater (RetroKeyboard177.zip)

Interesting, seems like it is a different kind of tool than what is discussed here. Nice that it helps, though.

However, I have noticed that this propietary 8BitDo updater uses DFU under the hood (as in fact it includes and uses an executable named dfu4.exe). So, shouldn't we be able to use dfu-util directly on GNU/Linux instead of the propietary 8BitDo program that uses DFU after all?

However, I can't see the 8BitDo RetroKeyboard listed in sudo dfu-util --list... so I don't quite understand what's going on here. Maybe the 8BitDo propietary flasher puts the keyboard into DFU mode somehow?

I guess this is something that could be looked into. Maybe there is some combination that would trigger the bootloader mode (for example, holding some key(s) while connecting the keyboard)? Otherwise one would have to figure out what the tool does to update the keyboard and try to replicate the behaviour.

@archeYR I tried asking 8BitDo how to put the keyboard in DFU mode and they answered:
Running the updater directly is DFU mode.
Whatever that means...