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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Move over Game*Mite, get behind me Pico Gamer, ...
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thwill Guru  Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
... there is a new kid in town. The open-source R36S hand-held console running MMB4L. https://youtube.com/shorts/H9-avgFKFOY Apologies for the poor video and lack of details I'm away from home and improvising, but I wanted to show off  .You will find the R36S all over the place, with various vendors selling it for $30-40 on AliExpress (depending on the Trump forecast du jour). Here is a website that claims to be "official", I don't think it is, I think it is some chancers trying to charge a premium. https://r36sgameconsole.com/ Best wishes,, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
so fantastic  found some on Ebay starting at 18€ and on Ali with 128gb for ~33€ Edited 2025-04-11 01:42 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
That's the SD card capacity, and they are dreadful quality SD cards, the first thing you do is copy the contents onto a quality card and throw the original away. Thus no point in buying 128 GB version over 64 GB version. Best wishes, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
Tom, that's what I thought. Since I already use retropi anyway, I have no use for a 128gb sd card with retro roms. I have ordered a 64gb version, but I certainly need help installing Linux and mmb4l on this device. Cheers Martin Edited 2025-04-11 01:57 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Right, I wasn't suggesting anyone buy one for MMBasic just yet; I've only just smoke tested it myself. The default software on these devices is Linux (ArkOS) running emulation-station (like the RetroPi). Configuration to add MMB4L as an "emulator" to emulation-station should be simple (famous last words). Watch this space over the next couple of weeks. Best wishes, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 523 |
Brilliant! |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4815 |
@Tom, What was your reasoning for specific this device ? Is it the CPU ? Or availability of some convenient Linux distro ? Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Recommendation from a friend (an extremely cynical and hard to impress electronics engineer - no not Peter  ), he was amazed at the power and quality at the price point.This thing seriously kicks arse: - ARM Cortex-A35 quad core processor @1.5GHz. - 3.5” IPS display @ 640×480 resolution. - 1GB LPDDR3 RAM & 64GB storage – Up to 128GB Micro SD card. - 3200 mAh rechargeable battery, up to 6 hours based on usage. - 27 consoles in One supporting over a dozen retro games consoles. Case in point, I'm away from home at the moment and didn't want to take my personal laptop (I forgot to encrypt the drive when I built it, and encrypting a Linux drive after the fact is a problem) so instead I'm using the R36S as a Linux build and development machine! I've got a wifi dongle hanging off an OTG cable on it and I'm using my ancient ChromeOS tablet and bluetooth keyboard as a terminal. Of course when it comes to games there is the question of why you would want to play MMBasic games on it when it is already capable of running pretty much every arcade game and console up to the late 90's. Note that it's about gameboy sized, so the controls are perhaps a little awkward for some adult fingers. Best wishes, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Hi folks, Second video of equally poor quality, now showing integration with the Emulation Station menu and more games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_1Mj-s5VaE A couple of teething issues still to address: - Games using my polling code to determine which controller is actually in use are reluctant to register the first button press; but fine once they've got over that. - Occasionally a game won't show the display until it registers its first button press. @Martin H, it's a "big ask" but I know you have the talent, is there any chance you might create me a couple of MMBasic specific images to replace the "Native" text and frankly inappropriate "Native American" image (grabbed from example code) I'm currently using ? Best wishes, Tom Edited 2025-04-12 00:57 by thwill MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
I like Gizmos Picture maybe we can tronsfor it (or parts of it)..  In addition to the artistic work, you first need a few technical details, of course, to realize the image you would need to know a little more about the required format. Can you post an example image to show the format? PS: Something like this:  (The background is transparent in this image) coffee.zip Edited 2025-04-12 22:34 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Thanks Martin, As pretty as Gizmo's picture is I'm not sure it would be right here. I will post example images tomorrow and also try and find links to what limited MMBasic "prior art" exists. If anyone else has any suggestions then please chip in. Best wishes, Tom Edited 2025-04-12 22:36 by thwill MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
the same scene in a more Pixar-like style:  (by ChatGPT) 'no comment |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7464 |
Wow! :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Very pretty. I wonder what crime that PCB had comitted to deserve those pliers ... and what the paint brushes are for ? Anyway, whilst realising that beggars can't be choosers, I still don't think that Gizmo, photogenic as he is, is the correct subject matter. My understanding is that he is more our genial host here on TBS and not an active MMBasic participant (?). I also doubt Geoff would thank us for using an image of his good-self, and I rather suspect that Peter doesn't appear on images (or reflect in mirrors) as that is the only way to explain his productivity .Inspired by your efforts I had an attempt with ChatGPT and got this far before today's credit ran out - it seemed to strangely reluctant to render a left hand side to the image: Original image:  My effort with ChatGPT:  I was wondering about something like this with a similarly styled CRT sitting atop it ? In the meantime the two current stand-in examples I'm using can be found here: https://github.com/dov/r36s-programming/tree/main/themes/native and more images from the same emulation-station theme are here: https://github.com/KALEL1981/es-theme-nes-box Previous MMBasic iconography is limited, e.g.  and:  I also have a set of font graphics provided by @Vegipete:  Best wishes Tom Edited 2025-04-13 22:10 by thwill MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
For kicks and giggles I had ChatGPT re-render the "self-portrait" I use on https://sockpuppetstudios.com/ in the Simpsons style, I think I may have to replace the original:  I love that the cat cushion from the original has been rendered as a real ginger cat ... which I do have. AI is so going to screw over a lot of people professionaly, possibly including yours truly. Best wishes, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
Hi Tom, I have now received the device. However, it is an R36Pro.  It does not come with Ark OS but an internal EmuElec. I have not yet managed to get Ark OS to run from the SD card. Will mmb4l also run with Emuelec? Cheers Martin EDit: I now managed to get Ark OS to run from the SD card Edited 2025-04-23 18:38 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Hi Martin, I think/hope that is just a clone with a slightly bigger display. In theory Emuelec is also built upon Linux, so the arm64 build of MMB4L can probably be installed on it, but you would be on your own ... <Wipes the sweat from his brow> So you're seeing the emulation-station front-end similar to what I posted in my previous video but without the Native/MMBasic program group ? 1. Have you tried configuring a wireless dongle and SSH'ing into the thing ? Depending on your answer to question 3 it may not be strictly necessary but I want to know what tools we have to work with. 2. Are you running with one SD card or two (one for OS and one for ROMs) ? 3. Do you have a PC that can read the contents of the SD card and read/write to its file-system ? 4. How much Linux do you know ? Best wishes, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
Actually, strike that, you are almost certainly going to need to be able to SSH into it as it's the only way to get a terminal to debug it when it isn't working. Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1192 |
I don't have a USBC WIFI stick or a suitable adapter at the moment, so the console is currently unable to connect to the network EmuElec appears to be permanently installed in the console. I therefore have no access to the internal file system. The games are on the SD card (FAT 32). To start Ark OS I have a 2nd SD card (one for OS and one for ROMs). Whereby I only have access to the boot and Rom partition with Windows. Since I use windows this looks bad, the possibility would be that I can access the Linux partitions with the Raspberry PI. The only thing I've been using Linux for a long time is the Raspberry Pi, so I would consider my level here to be “user”.Of course I have some experience with Mint or other Debian offshoots. In the terminal also on servers, but here always only worked according to default 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4244 |
You really did jump onto this wagon before I had the opportunity to attach the wheels  .You're probably going to need one. You might want to do some research on suitable Wifi adapters because apparently they don't all work with the R36S hardware. I am using one that I have from several years back, an "Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter" connected to an OTG Type C cable adapter with an additional USB extension cable to reduce the interference between the Wifi and the console's speaker. Hmm, I don't understand that. I don't think EmuElec is firmware so it should be on an SD card. How many SD card slots does the R36S Pro have, my standard R36S has one on the right which I have ArkOS on and one on the left that I have the ROMs on. OK, you need to check out whether that is possible; you will need some way to copy files onto the device. Tom Edited 2025-04-23 23:28 by thwill MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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