The R36T and R36T Max from AISLPC (pronounced ACE-L-PCÂ per the company rep, for those of you who may have been curious) have made a bit of a budget splash on the scene since their recent debuts. These odes to cathode ray tubes of yesteryear are the love letter nostalgia that anyone with a fondness for retro games can get behind.
But maybe you’re looking just to see what else is out there that can run on these handhelds, or just want something you can build from the ground up as your own.
Here are the steps to install ArkOS4CLone to get the most out of your R36T family of devices.
R36T Max Specs
- CPU: Rockchip RK3326
- GPU: Mali-G57 MC1-2EE
- RAM: 1GB
- Screen: 4″ 720×720 IPS Display with CRT bubble cover
- Sound: Single front-firing speaker
- Battery: 4000mAh (per listing)
- Connectivity: USB-C (single), 3.5mm AUX Jack, Micro-SD (single), Wi-Fi
- Operating System: Custom EmuElec Linux OS
- Weight: 221 grams (according to my kitchen scale)
- Colors: Wood Grain, Carbon Fiber, Gray, White, Black, Red, and Blue
Get the R36T MAX (Amazon)R36T MAX (AliExpress)
Recommended Accessories
- TF1 microSD Cards
- TF2 microSD Cards
What You’ll Need
- A trusted brand of micro SD card (64GB – 128GB recommended, but go nuts if you want to). Cards that come with these devices are of poor quality and prone to failure. If you ordered a loaded card with your device, back it up and chuck the card. It will eventually fail. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
- An SD Card reader
- A Windows PC (The DTB application is an .exe)
- 7-zip or WinRAR to unpack any downloads
- Rufus or any other Image writing software of choice
- Balena Etcher – Image writing software available for all major Desktop OS’
- Win32DiskImager – An open-source option designed for Windows, but there are many ports.
StockOS (RetromaxOS)
The stock OS setup on these devices is better than most. The custom EmuElec ROM (the manufacturer calls it RetroMax OS) included with these handhelds is specific to this company. By utilizing the onboard WiFi chip and the included downloader program (partake at your own risk)from AISLPC, there isn’t really anything off the table. If the handheld has the ability to run it, chances are you probably have access to it.
Help Line
AISLPC has thoughtfully included links to FAQs, guides, and even a support contact. Fairly above and beyond for a company in the budget Linux handheld market, going up against the likes of the R36S it was born from. There are some fun bells and whistles that up the presentation factor, too, like the snow static loading screens.
Stock has some nice presentation flourishes
But that’s not to say that the stock experience is perfect. I’ve had a few occasions where the device decides it doesn’t like the WiFi network I just connected it to and crashes when reloading the main menu. Other times, I’ve had issues getting one of these units running stock to see any available networks at all.
In short, it works well out of the box, but there is still some ironing to be done in places.
Note: At the time of writing this article, AISLPC has not made the StockOS image available for download. Should there be updates in the future, we will be sure to include them in developer news.
It also appears that there may be two variants of the StockOS. One with the Downloader application and one without. We’ve asked for clarification from the manufacturer.
ArkOS4Clone
This OS is my standard go-to option for clone devices like this and the R36S (and the best option available right now for the 36T series). Everything has been tuned for max tweaking, leaving all available device options available to the end-user. While we can’t expect miracles, there are some titles that ArkOS can squeeze a little more out of on systems that max out the R36T hardware, like PSP and Dreamcast. This won’t make the unplayable a smooth experience by any stretch, but it may get you over that annoying performance hump to bring games into the playable experience territory.
We’ll get ya there
My hope that I could swap in the SD card from the R36 MAX (which I’ve come to appreciate more with time) and have a plug-and-play experience was quickly dashed, despite the two devices sharing hardware and a manufacturer. We’re going to have to do this manually.
The first thing that we have to do is set the installation package to the correct panel and resolution to go with the R36T/MAX.
- Download the ArkOS4Clone latest release from the GitHub page. There are three separate compressed archives to grab (or you can download a single 3.9GB archive from linked mirrors)
Download the numbered archives
- Extract the downloaded archives to a chosen location on your PC – using 7-Zip or WinRAR
- After extracting the .001-.003 package of files, you will be left with an ArkOS4clone.img.xz file. You will need to unpack this compressed image again to get to the ArkOS4Clone.img file.
Unpack the .img.xz to finally get the burnable .img
- Open your image writing software of choice. I used Balena Etcher in this case.
- Insert your fresh SD card into your PC’s card reader. Select the extracted .img from your PC, and choose the SD card you just inserted as the image destination. *Warning: This operation will delete the contents of any selected destination drive. Be careful.Â
- Hit Flash!
Write the OS to your new SD card
- Once the writing job is complete, you will be tempted to insert the card into the device. DO NOT INSERT THE CARD INTO THE DEVICE YET. We still have another item to check off the list.
- Open the contents of the freshly written SD card in your OS file explorer. You should see 3 partitions. We are looking for the one labeled BOOT. If you cannot see it, enter disk management on your PC, select the partition on your SD card, and mount it. If you’re running Windows 10, you should only have to do this one time.
You want to run the DTB_Selector_win32.exe BEFORE inserting the SD Card into the handhelds
- Locate the DTB_Selector_Win32.exe file and run
This script will prep your install for your specific device – note the important warning in red about stock DTB files. Avoid them!
- Hit ENTER to move into the system selection screen.
- Navigate to Brand:AISLPC —-> Model: R36T/MAX —–> Language: English
- From here, we can move on with the installation of ArkOS4Clone. Safe in the knowledge that everything should display correctly with the correct panel information in-hand.
- Now insert it into the device and let ArkOS4Clone unpack and install
- After launch, you can safely shut down the R36T MAX and insert the SD card back into your PC
You did it!
Loading Games
- Navigate to the EASYROMS partition and move your game files into the corresponding console folder that has already been populated on the partition.
- After dropping your ROMS into their respective folders, eject the SD card from your PC and re-insert it into the R36T/MAX. The OS will automatically scan the files now in your games library and populate them in menus.
Place your ROMS in the corresponding system directory
Get the R36T MAX (Amazon)R36T MAX (AliExpress)
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