aicswitch

Make AIC8800 WiFi 6 / Bluetooth USB dongles work on Linux.

Cheap WiFi 6 USB dongles built on the AICSemi AIC8800D80 chip show up on Linux as a tiny USB disk holding a Windows installer, instead of a network card:

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 120: ID 1111:1111 Pandora International Ltd. 88M80

aicswitch sends the dongle the same vendor command the Windows tool uses, so it turns into a real WiFi + Bluetooth adapter. A udev rule does this automatically every time you plug it in.

Symptoms

Your dongle needs aicswitch if any of these apply:

• lsusb shows ID 1111:1111 Pandora International Ltd. 88M80
• A small USB drive called "Wifi Driver" containing Wifi6_install.exe appears when you plug it in
• dmesg shows scsi ... Direct-Access LGX WIFI6 and usb-storage, but no network interface
• eject and usb_modeswitch don't make the WiFi adapter appear

Tested with the AICSemi AIC8800D80 chip (WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5) sold under brands like LGX and in no-name "WiFi 6 USB adapter" sticks.

Install

Switcher plus the WiFi/Bluetooth driver (recommended):

curl -fsSL https://limitedio.github.io/aicswitch/install.sh | sudo sh -s -- --driver

Only the switcher, if you already have an AIC8800 driver:

curl -fsSL https://limitedio.github.io/aicswitch/install.sh | sudo sh

Then unplug the dongle and plug it back in. To remove aicswitch, run curl -fsSL https://limitedio.github.io/aicswitch/uninstall.sh | sudo sh (add -s -- --driver to also remove the driver).

Packages

Every release ships static binaries and packages for x86_64, i686, aarch64, armv7, armv6, riscv64 and ppc64le:

Distro	File	Install
Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Raspberry Pi OS	.deb	sudo apt install ./aicswitch_*.deb
Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE	.rpm	sudo dnf install ./aicswitch-*.rpm
Arch, Manjaro	.pkg.tar.zst	sudo pacman -U aicswitch-*.pkg.tar.zst
Alpine	.apk	sudo apk add --allow-untrusted aicswitch_*.apk
Anything else	aicswitch-linux-<arch>.tar.gz	static binary, no dependencies

From source

make
sudo make install        # PREFIX=/usr/local, UDEVDIR=/etc/udev/rules.d

You only need a C compiler and libc.

Usage

You normally never run it yourself, because udev runs it for you. To run it by hand:

sudo aicswitch            # find and switch every attached AIC dongle
sudo aicswitch /dev/sg1   # switch a specific SCSI generic device
aicswitch --version

After switching, the dongle shows up as a69c:8d80 aicsemi AIC Wlan, and as a69c:8d81 AICSemi AIC 8800D80 once the driver has loaded its firmware.

How it works

1. The dongle starts in "driver CD" mode as USB mass storage (vendor AIC, model WIFI6).
2. udev matches the 1111:1111 SCSI generic device and runs aicswitch /dev/sgN.
3. aicswitch sends the 16-byte vendor SCSI command FD 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F2 with SG_IO. This command was found by disassembling Usb_Driver.dll from the Windows installer stored on the dongle. A standard SCSI eject does not switch these units, which is why usb_modeswitch/eject rules don't help.
4. The dongle reconnects as a69c:8d80, and the AIC8800 driver uploads firmware and creates a wlx… interface plus an hci Bluetooth controller.

Driver

aicswitch only handles the mode switch. The WiFi/Bluetooth kernel driver is shenmintao/aic8800d80 (GPL), which --driver installs through DKMS so it survives kernel updates. If Secure Boot is enabled, you have to sign the module or turn Secure Boot off.

Adding another dongle

If your dongle has a different storage-mode USB ID, add it to ids[] in src/aicswitch.c and to 99-aicswitch.rules.in, then open a PR.

License

MIT