ZX Spectrum ZX81 Emulation : Experience with R36S

Just thought I would post on my experience with one of the new(ish) and inexpensive R36S handhelds which are ubiquitous at the moment, in case anybody is looking for a very cheap handheld for some Spectrum gaming on the go. I know there are loads of videos on it already so this is focused purely on using it for the ZX Spectrum.

I got mine for £52 delivered from a UK source and it came with a loaded uSD Card which was removed immediately as I don't want FAST coming round ;-) The unit runs ArkOS (https://github.com/christianhaitian/arkos/wiki) which has the EmulationStation front-end, so if you are familiar with that you will be right at home. It can run others but I found this to be the simplest to set-up.

R36S has 14 buttons (A, B, X, Y, Start, Select, Fn, 4 shoulder, power, reset and volume up/down), two analogue sticks and a d-pad, no touch screen but easily enough controls for Spectrum gaming. Size wise it is just a little bit smaller than an original Gameboy, I would say similar to a Gameboy pocket, so not too big the hand. The screen is a very bright 640x480 colour LCD, it has two USB-C ports (one for charging), 2 uSD card slots and an ok built in speaker which can get very loud, headphones probably recommended. It doesn't have wi-fi built in but easy to add with a USB dongle and post initial set-up you don't really need it, well for Spectrum usage anyway.

I decided to not use the software that game with it and instead put the latest ArkOS distro for the device on a new uSD card. The latest pre-built image can be obtained here (https://github.com/AeolusUX/ArkOS-R3XS). Note no ROMs/Tapes/Disks etc... are included with this, it is just the front-end and emulation software. You need to add everything else yourself, and as the focus here is ZX Spectrum emulation that is easy enough from this site. Flashed the uSD card, popped it in the R36S and on first boot nothing happened. A quick read later and I discovered that as these are cheap no brand made (open-source) they can come with different screen types, so you need to try the different screen codes from here (https://github.com/AeolusUX/R36S-DTB/tree/main/New%20Screens) till one works. Mine ended up being screen 4. After that it booted fine and on first boot the software does some set-up, and eventually after a few seconds will load. The set-up creates all the directories include one for the ZX Spectrum. As nothing is on the uSD card yet this is where you need to copy the ROMs or Tapes in this case.

I popped a load of Z80 snapshots, TZX tapes and +3 DSK disks onto the SD card and rebooted. On boot the menu now showed ZX Spectrum as an option, clicking in that I got all the games listed. As with most things my go to first game on any emulator is Sabre Wulf which was a Z80 snapshot (created using Skoolkit).



As expected it loaded up immediately and the music started, to start the game you need to select 4 for Kempston Joystick and then 0 to start. The L2 shoulder button brings up a keyboard so you can select any key, making this easy enough to do and the game played perfectly. Not a massive fan of d-pads but the analogue stick works really well in its place. The emulator is Fuse v1.6.0 which is the latest version so compatibility is excellent and it played everything I threw at it. It allows you to remap the buttons to suite which is useful for the games that need joystick and some keys like Atic Atac. I found Z80 snapshots worked best as it would load up in the correct machine i.e. 48k or 128k. Some games are better with tapes (multi-load) and these also work fine with instant loading (you can turn this off but not sure why you would wait 5mins). For tapes, as for any emulator, you do need to pick which machine to use or they may not work i.e. early titles on 128k machines. I usually make the emulator default to 128k (toastrack) and use Z80s for the titles that have to use a 48k. You can set a configuration for each game so it will remember your preferences including which controls to use so after first set-up it won't need doing again.



Border effects seem to be fine tested with Aquaplane.



+3 disks also loaded fine with instant loading, as for tapes you can turn off fast loading so they load as they would on a real machine. This is a lot quicker than tape so actually worth doing. I tried Robocop and Where Time Stood Still and both worked great.



Within the emulator the Fn button combined with the other buttons do different things. Fn Start is used to quit the emulator. Fn Y takes a screenshot, Fn X enters the Fuse menu where you can change the options, remap keys etc... Fn B resets the Spectrum and Fn A pauses it. Fn is also a fast forward button in case you want to play a game on speed!

To get the screen shots on the menu etc.. you need to connect the device to wifi, it can then "scrape" the internet for the pictures, box art etc... I also changed my theme to CyberPunk 2077 esque which has some cool music :-) There are hundreds of themes out there so it can be a bit overwhelming.

Battery life seems to be around 4-5hrs and it just uses USB-C to charge, weirdly it needs a USB-A to USB-C cable as my USB-C to USB-C didn't work, guess it just needs 5V, you do get one in the box.

Anyway overall very impressed for the money and this will be joining me on many trips :-) I'm also using the device for Amiga emulation and this is way better than I thought it would be. Tested out a few CD32 titles including Liberation and Frontier and have had no problems so far. The R36S seems to handle 8bit/16bit consoles and computers with very few problems, so if this is your target I can highly recommend it.

Bought mine from here : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007431503801.html

Source : https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11349