Chapter 1

Installing

Download the image, check it, write it to a microSD card and start the DS+; and, for SSH, provision.toml.

Installing DSlot takes one image, one microSD card and a few minutes. The DS+ itself is never touched: put the stock card back any time and you’re on stock again.

What you need🔗

• An Anbernic RG DS+.
• A microSD card of 16 GB or more. Everything on it is erased, so use a spare, not the card the DS+ came with.
• A computer with a card reader, and an imaging program. Raspberry Pi Imager works on macOS, Windows and Linux and writes the downloaded file as it is; dd works too. balenaEtcher works only with the image unpacked first (below).

1. Download🔗

From the download page, download dslot-0.1.0-beta2-rg-ds-plus.img.xz. The file is compressed (.xz). Raspberry Pi Imager and dd write it as it is; for balenaEtcher, unpack it first.

2. Check the download🔗

Each image has a SHA-256 checksum on the download page and in the release’s SHA256SUMS. A matching checksum means the file arrived whole and is the one that was published. In a terminal, in the folder the file is in:

Or, with SHA256SUMS in the same folder, sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing (Linux) or shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing (macOS) checks every file you have.

The long string printed must be exactly the one on the download page. If it isn’t, download the file again; don’t write a file that doesn’t match.

3. Write the card🔗

With Raspberry Pi Imager🔗

1. Open Raspberry Pi Imager. If it asks which Raspberry Pi you have, any answer will do: it only filters its own list.
2. For the operating system, choose Use custom, then the .img.xz you downloaded.
3. For storage, choose your microSD card. Check the size: choosing the wrong drive erases it.
4. If it offers OS customisation (user name, Wi-Fi), skip it: that is for Raspberry Pi OS. The card’s own settings go in provision.toml (below).
5. Write. It writes, then reads the card back to check it.

With dd (macOS and Linux)🔗

Find the card’s device name first, and be certain of it: dd writes wherever it is told.

On macOS, diskutil list shows the card as /dev/diskN (check the size), then:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
xzcat dslot-0.1.0-beta2-rg-ds-plus.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/rdiskN bs=4m
sync

On Linux, lsblk shows it as /dev/sdX or /dev/mmcblkN, then:

xzcat dslot-0.1.0-beta2-rg-ds-plus.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress

With balenaEtcher🔗

balenaEtcher can’t write the .img.xz directly, so unpack it first:

1. Unpack the .img.xz: on macOS, double-click it; on Windows, use 7-Zip; on Linux, unxz it. You get a .img of about 7 GB.
2. Open balenaEtcher and choose Flash from file: the .img.
3. Select target: your microSD card. Check the size: choosing the wrong drive erases it.
4. Flash. It writes, then reads the card back to check it.

When the card is written, your computer shows a small drive called NIBOS, and you can eject the card.

The card has other partitions that macOS and Windows can’t read. If your computer says the disk is unreadable, or offers to format it, say no (Ignore, Eject or Cancel; on macOS never Initialise): formatting would erase DSlot. The message can appear while the card is still being written; answer it the same way and let the writing finish.

4. Into the DS+🔗

1. Turn the DS+ off.
2. Put the card in the slot marked TF1 (TF1/INT). A second card in TF2 is optional: it can hold games: exFAT or FAT32, named anything (Games, BIOS and saves).
3. Turn it on. First start says what to expect.

Optional: an SSH key (provision.toml)🔗

You need this only to log in to the DS+ from a computer over SSH: SSH stays off until the device has your public key, and this file is how you give it one. Everything else can be done on the DS+ itself: join Wi-Fi in DSlot’s menu (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), and set a password with passwd in the console.

Before you start the DS+, on the NIBOS drive, copy provision.toml.example to provision.toml, in the same place, and open it in a text editor. Every line starting with # is switched off; remove the # from the ones you want and fill them in. The file can also set a Wi-Fi network, a password and the time zone, which saves doing them on the device:

timezone = "Europe/London"

[wifi]
ssid = "My network"
password = "the network password"

[user]
password = "a password"

[ssh]
authorized_keys = ["ssh-ed25519 AAAA... me@my-computer"]

Leave out any part you don’t need. Save the file, eject the card properly, and put it in the DS+.

What happens to the file. At the next start the DS+ checks it. If everything in it is right, it applies it and erases provision.toml. If anything is wrong, nothing in it is applied: it is renamed provision.rejected-1.toml, and provision.error.txt beside it says what was wrong. Fix it, rename it back to provision.toml, and start again.

To change a setting later, write a new provision.toml with only what changes: a part left out keeps what was set.

Going back to the stock system🔗

Turn the DS+ off, take the DSlot card out of TF1 and put the stock card back. That’s it.

To use the DSlot card for something else, write another image to it, or format it on a computer (on a Mac, Disk Utility’s Erase on the whole card, not one partition).