DSlot Beta

A game system for the Anbernic RG DS+

Two screens. Five seconds. Your games.

DSlot is a game shelf made for the clamshell, with an emulator for every system behind one menu. It comes on a card of its own: press power, and your carts are waiting over the slot.

Download 0.1.0-beta2 How to install

Beta 0.1.0-beta2, released 2026-11-08: what's new.

  • 0.65sfrom reset to the kernel
  • 1.5sto a picture on both screens
  • ≈5sto the game shelf
  • 23systems, one menu
  • Nintendo DS
  • Game Boy Advance
  • Game Boy
  • Game Boy Color
  • SNES
  • NES
  • Famicom Disk System
  • Mega Drive
  • Mega-CD
  • 32X
  • Pico
  • Master System
  • SG-1000
  • Game Gear
  • PC Engine
  • PC Engine CD
  • PlayStation
  • PSP
  • Atari Lynx
  • Neo Geo Pocket
  • WonderSwan
  • Game & Watch
  • Arcade
  • PortMaster ports

The shelf

Push a cart into the slot

Your games as carts over a card slot on the touch screen, their boxes, play time and ratings on the top one. Or a cover grid, or a list: flick it and it glides. A page for each system, a picker on Select, and a card for every console, with its history and cited facts.

Tour the shelf

One menu

Every emulator, the same buttons

Back opens the menu, Menu saves and takes you home, and the next start carries on where you left off. Six save slots with pictures, settings per game or per system, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth: the same menu in DSlot, DSperate, inkdot, nibcase and inktick.

Every control

The rest of the device

Everything on the board works

  • Sleeps like it should

    Close the lid: deep sleep, and Wi-Fi back about two seconds after you open it.

  • Charges asleep

    Plug in a switched-off DS+ and it charges dark, amber light on. Battery protect stops at 80%.

  • Updates itself

    Signed updates over Wi-Fi, installed while you play. If one ever fails to start, it rolls back by itself.

  • Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

    Join networks and pair headphones and controllers from the shelf's menu. Sound follows the headphones.

  • Linux underneath

    DSlot is based on nibOS, a streamlined Arch Linux for the device. Leave the shelf for a console with a touch keyboard, or SSH in.

  • PortMaster on tap

    Get PortMaster from the Apps page and install ports over Wi-Fi; they appear on their own shelf page.

Under the shelf

Mainline, open, and yours

DSlot's card carries nibOS, a Linux system made for the DS+: no frozen vendor kernel, but mainline Linux and U-Boot, open graphics drivers, and all of Arch Linux ARM. Every part is free software.

About nibOS   The emulators   The licences

  1. DSlot and the emulatorsThe shelf, DSperate, inkdot, nibcase, inktick
  2. nibkitThe SDK: both screens, buttons, touch, the shared menu
  3. nibos-hwThe hardware layer: one gamepad, sound that follows the jack, sleep, charging
  4. Arch Linux ARMsystemd, pacman, a full userland
  5. Linux 7.3, mainlineWith Panfrost and Mesa: open graphics
  6. U-Boot, mainlineSPL in Falcon mode: the kernel 0.65 s after reset

Start here

Three steps to the shelf

  1. 1DownloadAn image for the DS+, and its checksum.
  2. 2Write a cardWith balenaEtcher or dd. Your stock card stays as it is.
  3. 3Add your gamesCopy them into Roms/ and power on.

Bring your own games, or dive into the free homebrew made for these systems.

How it was made

DSlot, the emulators and nibOS were built with AI agents (Claude, in Claude Code), directed by one person and played on a real RG DS+ every step of the way. Want to join in, with or without AI? Contributing says how.