Anbernic RG353V: configuring ArkOS

Last year I got myself the Anbernic RG353V handheld console so I could play Gameboy Advance and PSP games. At the end, I had little time to play and I had to leave it in the drawer.

This week I found some time to play with it, but I ended up formatting the SD with all my ROMs by mistake, so I had to download everything again 🫠. Given I had to restart from zero, I decided to install ArkOS instead, due to some of the nifty features it has.

Because of that, there were some changes to the configuration that I made to either improve performance or simply user experience, and since this will probably not be the last time, better keep it written somewhere 🙂.

• Improving PPSSPP framerate/performance

  When playing lightweight PSP games, I noticed a drop of framerate and glitchy sound. For that I made changes to the PPSSPP configuration.

  1. Go to PPSSPP settings
  2. Graphics -> Frame skipping -> Set to 1
  3. Graphics -> Auto frameskip -> enabled
  4. Graphics -> Show FPS counter -> enabled

• Enabling SSH access

  Default username: ark
  Default password: ark

  1. Configuration -> Enable Remote Service -> enabled

• Download all themes

  1. Configuration -> Tools -> ThemeMaster
  2. Settings -> Screen Size -> 640x480
  3. Install a theme -> Install all themes
  4. Quit ThemeMaster
  5. Press start -> UI Settings -> Theme

• Enable threaded loading

  1. Press start -> Advanced Settings -> Threaded Loading -> enabled

• Enable auto suspend

  1. Press start -> Advanced Settings -> Auto Suspend Timeout (MINS) -> 5

I should update this post as more interesting configuration pop up.