Installation

Download the Flasher

Get the latest release from archr-flasher releases.

• Linux: .AppImage (no install) or .deb for Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives
• macOS: .dmg
• Windows: .msi installer

Plug your microSD

32 GB or larger is recommended, 8 GB is the minimum. On 32 GB and up, the first boot creates ARCHR_ROMS, an exFAT partition for the ROMs that opens on any computer. Cards of 16 GB or less have no room for it: everything works, but the ROMs stay inside the ext4 STORAGE partition, reachable from a PC only over the network (Samba or SSH).

The Flasher will erase everything on the card before writing. Back up anything you need first.

Pick your console

The first screen asks which console you have: R36S Original, R36S Clone or R36S Soysauce. That choice decides which of the two images is downloaded, and it is also the option string the Overlay Generator expects.

Pick the image

Let the Flasher download the latest release, or point it at an .img.gz you already have.

Pick the panel overlay

Generate mipi-panel.dtbo for your board on the Overlay Generator, then select the file here. The Flasher installs it as overlays/mipi-panel.dtbo on the boot partition.

You can skip this step on Linux, macOS and Windows. The Flasher then copies no overlay and keeps the image's panel configuration. If you select a file that is missing or cannot be read, flashing stops before writing to the card.

Without an overlay, the console boots with the panel description that comes in the base device tree, which only works on some boards. A blank or scrambled screen after the boot logo usually means you need the overlay.

Write

Pick the SD card and click Flash. The Flasher writes the image, optionally verifies the written data (Verify after writing), and installs the selected overlay. Verification and preparation details vary by operating system.

Verification takes extra time and helps catch a bad card or a truncated write.

Boot

Insert the SD into the device and power on. The first boot does an automatic partition resize and reboots once. After the second boot you land in archr-launcher.

Download an image

From Arch-R releases grab one of:

• <Ver of="imageBase" />-original.img.gz, for the original boards
• <Ver of="imageBase" />-clone.img.gz, for clone boards

The date in the filename is the release date, so a newer release has a different name.

Verify and decompress

Verify the downloaded .img.gz against its checksum before decompressing and writing. This verifies the download, not the written card.

# replace <date> with the real file name
sha256sum -c ArchR-R36S.aarch64-<date>.img.gz.sha256
gunzip ArchR-R36S.aarch64-<date>.img.gz

Identify the SD device

lsblk
# look for your card, usually /dev/sdX or /dev/mmcblkX

Write

Use the exact filename of the selected image in if=, not a wildcard, and verify the destination disk.

# replace <date> and /dev/sdX
sudo dd if=ArchR-R36S.aarch64-<date>.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress
sync

Install the panel overlay

The image ships no panel overlay. Generate mipi-panel.dtbo for your board on the Overlay Generator, then copy it into the boot partition:

sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt
sudo cp mipi-panel.dtbo /mnt/overlays/mipi-panel.dtbo
sudo umount /mnt

The path and filename are fixed: extlinux.conf loads FDTOVERLAYS /overlays/mipi-panel.dtbo and nothing else. A file saved anywhere else is never read.

Boot

Insert and power on. First boot resizes and reboots; second boot reaches archr-launcher.

Download the bundle

Grab archr-dtbo-offline.zip (about 100 KB) and extract it anywhere.

Everything it needs travels inside it:

• archr_dtbo.py, the same script the website runs
• archr-bases/, the three base DTBs the generator mirrors from
• fdt/, the device tree library (pure Python, BSD licensed)
• generate.sh (Linux, macOS) and generate.bat (Windows)
• README.txt

Check Python

A current Python 3 release is the only requirement (Python 3.5 is not compatible). No pip, no network access.

python3 --version   # Linux / macOS
python --version    # Windows

On Windows, install it from python.org and tick Add python.exe to PATH during setup.

Generate the overlay

Open a terminal in the extracted folder and run:

# Linux / macOS
python3 archr_dtbo.py rk3326-r36s-linux.dtb SDORIG -o mipi-panel.dtbo

# Windows
python archr_dtbo.py rk3326-r36s-linux.dtb SDORIG -o mipi-panel.dtbo

First argument: the DTB from your console's original firmware. Second: the option string for your console (see the table below). -o: where the overlay is written; without it the overlay goes to standard output.

The generate.sh and generate.bat wrappers do exactly the same thing. On Linux and macOS the wrapper may need its executable bit back if your unzip tool dropped it: chmod +x generate.sh.

When your DTB differs from the ArchR base

Some settings can differ between the ArchR base and your stock DTB: a LED pin, the stick range, the panel reset pin, the PMIC interrupt. On the website the generator lists every difference before it writes the overlay, with both values side by side, and you pick which one to keep for each. The stock value is selected by default, since it describes your board. Keep the ArchR value when the stock one is known to be wrong, for example a LED on a pin that lights nothing.

In the offline edition, --list prints the differences, and --keep-base takes the keys to keep on the ArchR value, separated by commas:

python3 archr_dtbo.py rk3326-r36s-linux.dtb SDCLONE --list
python3 archr_dtbo.py rk3326-r36s-linux.dtb SDCLONE --keep-base joypad/abs_ry-p-tuning -o mipi-panel.dtbo

Install the result

Copy the generated file to the ARCHR partition of the card as overlays/mipi-panel.dtbo. That exact folder and filename is what extlinux.conf already points at (FDTOVERLAYS /overlays/mipi-panel.dtbo), so there is nothing else to configure. An overlay saved under a different name, or in a different folder, is simply never loaded and the console still boots to a blank screen.