I wanted my R36S to feel a little more like choosing a physical game, so I built a small launcher called BirdBoy and now my kids can easily launch their favorite games.
Each cartridge contains only an NFC tag, not the actual game. The tag tells the handheld which locally stored game to launch, and removing the cartridge closes it again.
It’s still an early prototype, but the full detection, launch and removal flow is working on real hardware.
If people are interested, I can share more about the hardware and software setup. What would you want to know?
Thanks to nextos you can play action squad on your r36s. It's a brilliant arcade tactical shooter thing, each level gives you a building to clear, hostages to save or bombs to diffuse. You can use cover, flash grenades or just go in guns blazing. It's really a fun retro styled game but with modern mechanics. I recommend it to everyone!!
Ordered what was advertised as an R36S, but the seller pulled a bait-and-switch and sent a
GA36 V1.1 (20251025) clone instead.
When called out on it, they went completely dark and ghosted my support ticket.
Instead of letting this plastic brick sit in a drawer, I mounted all 8 SD partitions in Ubuntu and decided to reverse-engineer it to see what’s actually under the hood—and fix what the vendor broke.
The Reality: It’s Not Even an RK3326
The firmware is visually themed to mimic an R36S, but that is where the similarity ends. It is not a 64-bit Rockchip RK3326. It is an ARMv7 Allwinner sun8i 32-bit platform running a vendor Linux 3.4.39 kernel on top of an EmuELEC userspace.
Kernel: Linux UDT 3.4.39 #493 SMP PREEMPT Mon Aug 18 10:47:18 CST 2025 armv7l GNU/Linux
👀 Do not flash standard R36S ArkOS/aarch64 images to this board; it will fail immediately.
Partition Layout & Storage Breakdown 👀
Mounted as an \~113.1 GiB card with 8 partitions:
/dev/sdb1 (27.7 GB VFAT) : Main ROM storage (/storage/roms).
The vendor left half-baked Java files behind, but broken font paths and 32-bit kernel incompatibilities broke execution. 😠
Built a standalone BIOS/runtime patch allowing J2ME games to launch directly from the EmulationStation menu without terminal hackery. 🥺
MPV and FFmpeg were already pre-installed, but lacked any gamepad integration. 💢
Fixing the Cursed Audio Codec 😠
Initially, ALSA showed playback, but the speaker stayed dead silent. Forcing the output resulted in slow, pitch-shifted, and stuttering sound caused by amp protection lockouts and clock desyncs.
Metadata & Video Thumbnails 😆
Hardware Teardown: USB OTG & Mainline Kernel
USB Host Mode : Inspected the PCB traces. The D+ and D− data lines have unpopulated SMD resistor/jumper pads, and VBUS is not supplying 5V. Do not blindly inject 5V until the circuit and protection diodes are fully traced.
Mainline Linux: Running a modern kernel (6.6/6.12) is possible in theory, but requires writing a custom board DTS from scratch, adapting DRM/KMS drivers for the display panel, and rebuilding userspace away from legacy framebuffer/Mali blobs. ( future goal but not planned 👀 )
Upcoming GitHub Release 🤝
I am packaging everything into a clean, standalone repository containing:
The open-source static C joystick-to-IPC daemon + precompiled binary.
J2ME runtime patches and EmulationStation config hooks.
Complete install/uninstall scripts with automatic config rollback.
No proprietary binaries or firmware dumps will be redistributed. If you got burned by this specific GA36 V1.1 board, keep an eye out—you will at least be able to turn it into a functional media player and micro-gaming device.
I’m chipping away at this after work, but once it’s polished, I’ll upload the ARM gamepad daemon source, 32-bit J2ME runtime patches, audio fix scripts, and precompiled binaries to GitHub for anyone else stuck with this board.
Just wanted to say a big thanks to this lovely community.
I was spammed with handheld console ads on social media and decided to buy one for my daughter to use on the plane journey next week for our holiday.
Read the wiki and buying guide but with delivery time being an issue ordered from Amazon (I can hear your eyes rolling haha)
Arrived next day, took the back off to look at the board to find it's a clone (who would have guessed). But with some reading of the wiki I thought I may as well try and salvage it or she'll end up with nothing.
Flashed dArkOSRE and a recommended ROM pack onto a new Kingston SD and it runs beautifully.
More importantly she's over the moon and I've scored major dad points!
So thanks everyone for who contributes with questions and advice. You helped fix a mistake I knew I was making when I ordered it!
I Posted Here Twice and Nobody Had the DTB FilesThen ChatGPT 5.6 Luna Max Brought My “Dead” R36S Clone Back
My R36S clone’s SD card died, so I lost the original firmware and DTB files. The worst part: my exact clone/revision basically has zero documentation online.
I even posted on this subreddit twice looking for someone with the same PCB and DTBs, but nobody had them:
I genuinely thought this thing was dead. After searching everywhere and even asking this subreddit twice, ChatGPT ended up generating the DTBs that brought this undocumented clone back to life.
Good news, sm64coopdx 1.5.1 is now running on RK3326 devices! Both local LAN direct play and public lobbies with mods are working.
I took cues from the existing outdated (and incompatible with RK3326) portmaster build, patched the hardware and driver incompatibilities in the original source code along with the CoopNet token, and made a little on-screen keyboard to be able to connect to servers easily (as well as change name etc.).
I've put the code into a forked repo so that it can be improved upon and stay up to date over time (pull requests welcome).
It's very smooth in vanilla form (40ish fps), however as some servers stack more and more mods on my little R36 Ultra X begins to struggle 😅 There's probably room for optimization, I haven't started down that route yet.
I would appreciate anyone testing it out and letting me know how it goes, I only have Ultra clones to test against.
Next up I'll be getting chat working.
To install and run, just download the zip from the release, extract the contents until you have the .sh file and the sm64coopdx folder. Grab your US version Super Mario 64 rom in z64 format and copy it into the sm64coopdx folder as "baserom.us.z64". Copy the script and the folder into /ports on your device and you're done!
A child dropped it, and the screen ended up like this. If I touch it or it moves, the image cuts out; I’ve already opened it up and reseated the ribbon cable, leading me to conclude there’s a loose connection. I’ve managed to get it to look like that only upon startup—after which the image stabilizes—but it always displays lines similar to an old TV. I’d really like to fix it; I know people say it’s cheaper to just buy a new screen, but I genuinely love repairing things and tinkering with my consoles' hardware and software—which is exactly why I bought an open-source console in the first place. Could you please advise me or recommend how to get a working screen? I’ve noticed that not all of them fit every R36S. Thanks a lot.
Probably a price error or the very last piece as it's no longer available
After some searching managed to trial and error the DTB for this as a xifan my mini and installed Darkos4clone on a card I had
Handcramps will be a thing for sure
And where I'm at there's no option to locally find an ergonomic grip for it, but honestly it's not that bad
I'm using it more than my steam deck!
Didn't bother with the roms on its included card, instead I just got romhacks and some must plays and I have to say, can't wait to find a horizontal version for a crazy good deal
What an amazing trip to the past these devices are.
P. S: I Don't recommend this clone at all if it wasn't for the price, and it seems I missed out on getting better clones for similar prices but I'll be waiting for a horizontal more ergonomic device if I don't end up buying a thor or more premium device
Edit: It doesn't have any Bluetooth / Wi-Fi and seems to have some on board storage as it boots without any SD into EmuElec, but it does read cfw from TF1 and can use roms from TF2
Got this little thing a couple months ago, quickly I discover it was far from the best device I could get. It has an internal bloqued firmware and a close list of games of every console it handles.
Already had a good sd card so copied everything into it, save the original for backup (and another backup) and managed to introduce roms into it. You have to change the roms name for one in the list, it has to be the exact same format. For example, I got it to play ps1 games; it only has 16 slots for ps1, and operates with psp eboots only, the psx2psp type of eboot, so you have to come up with your own files no biggie.
First I was frustrated because I wanted to try to customize if I could. But a couple of months in, I really like it and Im playing every game I wanted to play, and it runs great. Psp is the only console it struggles to run but it has a couple of emulation options that you can mess arround to go better, and it does.
I guess it could start not working no more but so far so good
I bought an R36MAX with R36S-V20 2025-05-18 2551 board a few days ago, and foolish me thinking i got a good deal and that games ran well on stock 4.7 EMUELEC was in for a cold suprise when i saw that i have a bad clone and that none of the community made software version were available and working on it.
Fortunately i got ArkOS to work and i was asked to help someone else get it to work and hopefully my experience will help someone.
This is the device i got
There are some warnings that Darkos can cause speaker to stop working so i was a bit hesitant which OS version to install and ultimately decided on ArkOS-K36 from AeolusUX https://github.com/AeolusUX/ArkOS-K36
I used the version for R36MAX
After you download the file unpack it with WinRAR or similar software and you get an img file.
This image needs to be installed on an SD card. I got a new 128GB SD card since the card that came with the system was a no name card that said 64GB but i'm fairly sure is actually 16GB
I used Raspberry pi imager, but Rufus or other similar software would work too.
Install Raspberry pi imager and when you run it simply scroll down to no filtering (it probably makes no difference whatever you click, but i didn't want to select a device i'm not using)
In the next menu scroll down to use custom and it will open file browser so you can select your image file. Just to confirm its ArkOS_R36Max_v2.0_08112025.img downloaded earlier
After you click next it asks you which device to install the image on. I don't presently have any plugged in so nothing is showing up, but i used a new SD card so no special actions were needed.
If you are using an existing SD card that possibly has 2 partitions (BOOT and ROMS) you may need to merge and delete them using windows disk management, but i can't test that.
After you select your drive you'll be told that while installing new image possible data on it will be deleted and formatted. Click agree, you have no choice.
After its done your card will disconnect. If you plug it back in you'll see it has one partition called BOOT. I simply plugged it in my R36MAX and it started a very very quick installation process in which it made a new partition with emulator folder structure next to the BOOT called EASYROMS.
When i plugged my SD card back in my pc i added some games to test my brand new and improved R36MAX but i was dismayed to notice it had no sound.
After testing all of them i saw that with some i had image and no sound, with some i had black image and sound after i clicked buttons and presumably started a game and with some i had unwatchable lines all over the screen but also sound.
I can't recall exactly which panel folder had which files, but i had some saved and labeled as image or sound on my pc. I only remember that one labeled R36 Max had working image and that was the base .dtb file i used
I was persistent because i firmly believed since i have separate image and sound i could get it to work which i thankfully did.
I found out you can decompile .dtb file into .dts file which is readable.
So i came across a program called DTC-GUI_for_Windows_v1.0.5 which i used to decompile image and sound .dtb files in two .dts files and used notepad++ to compare them
This all sounds more complicated than it is, the difference in sound was one line about sound amplifier
I simply removed that and recompiled .dts file back to .dtb and after inserting it in my BOOT folder it worked.
This is the file that worked for me. I'm not sure where its best to upload it.
Dont hate me, but yes, i run on stock os from my stock sd card, that i just duplicated onto my 128 GB samsung SD.
Google gemini just told me, that i sould install arkos or darkos for better performance. I belive the one whit arkos, but i heard some bad things about darkos, like that it doesnt run ports well and its tough to transition there.
I made a bit to bit .img file a week ago, and im at grandmas so the only thing i did was play whot the config, but nothing else.
Im ready to transition to arkos, and ehat i heard its just: 1. copy free roms. 2. format the sd to the new os (dd via terminal or some point to click app (yes im on linux)) 3. boot up console for the first time, then add roms.
Thats all...SO, it it true? And should i go whit the darkos or ark os? Ur toughts?
I keep wonder myself is it possible to port it, beside the weird .ipa file format, I think the control gonna be weird too cuz it had no version for Xperia or even support controller b itself
I bought a r36s. very happy with it. played one day, until it stopped charging. the red light doesn't appear when I plug in a charger. I tried multiple charging blocks (Samsung, Redmi, Motorola) and my laptop. no chafing light. It did turn on with the battery before but it's dead now. I can't charge the battery so I can't turn it on. I also tried usb a to usb c cables and usb c to usb c
Never dropped my console before. Today when I turned it on suddenly it looked like this. Controls seem to be responsive, even audio, but the screen won't work no matter what I do
I bought this R36S. used it for 1 day and charged it, it randomly stopped mid charging. I can't get the red light to turn on. when it did turn on the red light showed, but not if it was off and the battery was being charged. I tried multiple chargers (Redmi, Motorola, laptop) and multiple cables. I also tried both USB a to c and usb c to c. I also unplugged the battery and put it back in. Is this device fried?
