Homebrew app Emulator [Release] 3DS-CLI - Run a real RISC-V Linux environment on the Nintendo 3DS

cmdada · Friday at 4:39 PM

Hi guys!!

I’m releasing 3DS-CLI, a Nintendo 3DS homebrew app that boots a real RISC-V Linux environment inside the normal 3DS Homebrew Launcher. It uses mini-rv32ima by cnlohr as a compact RISC-V CPU emulator, with terminal output on the top screen and a custom touch keyboard on the bottom screen.

Features

Boots a RISC-V Linux image on real 3DS hardware through software emulation
VT100-style terminal output on the top screen
Custom bottom-screen touch keyboard
D-pad sends arrow keys
Includes a prebuilt Linux image with BusyBox tools, a JavaScript runtime, and CLI Doom

Installation

Universal-Updater:
3DS-CLI can be installed directly from Universal-Updater. Just search for 3DS-CLI and install it from there.

Manual install:

Download 3DS-CLI_Install.zip from the latest GitHub release
Unzip it
Copy 3ds-cli.3dsx and Image into the /3ds/ folder on your SD card
Launch 3DS-CLI from the Homebrew Launcher
Wait for Linux to boot. On my SDXC card and 3ds ll it takes around 172 seconds to reach the login prompt.
Log in as root with a blank password.

Controls

Bottom screen: touch keyboard
D-pad: arrow keys
START: exit back to the Homebrew Launcher

This is mostly a fun technical experiment rather than a fast Linux machine. It is running through software emulation on 3DS hardware, so booting takes a while and performance is limited.

Download / Source
GitHub:
https://github.com/cmdada/3DS-CLI
Latest release:
https://github.com/cmdada/3DS-CLI/releases/latest

Credits

Built with devkitARM / libctru
Powered by mini-rv32ima by cnlohr

License
GPL-3.0.

Exnor · Friday at 5:14 PM

Very cool. A RISC-V emulator for ARMv6?

cmdada · Friday at 5:16 PM

Exnor said:
Very cool. A RISC-V emulator for ARMv6?

Yup, although it'll run pretty much anywhere you can get libc to compile, I first used mini-rv32ima on an atmel processor of all things

Exnor · Friday at 5:18 PM

cmdada said:
Yup, although it'll run pretty much anywhere you can get libc to compile, I first used mini-rv32ima on an atmel processor of all things

And the performance ?

cmdada · Friday at 5:40 PM

Exnor said:
And the performance ?

it runs, its usable for typical shell commands but is noticably slow doing anything complicated, the image included has coremark but i'm still working on optimizing its performance

Exnor · Friday at 5:42 PM

cmdada said:
it runs, its usable for typical shell commands but is noticably slow doing anything complicated, the image included has coremark but i'm still working on optimizing its performance

Thank you for the work

. I love to see this type of projects.

cmdada · Friday at 9:54 PM

Also installing it from universal update now installs the image too so there's no user intervention required

ber71 · Saturday at 10:29 AM

Interesting.
Does this have access to the real sdcard? Could be useful for some maintenance tasks.

Cain21 · Saturday at 12:05 PM

Is this for the new 3ds family only as on my old 3ds xl I'm getting an error saying failed to allocate 33554432 bytes of RAM

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 12:05 PM

Is this for the new 3ds family only as on my old 3ds xl I'm getting an error saying failed to allocate 33554432 bytes of RAM

cmdada · Saturday at 8:56 PM

ber71 said:
Interesting.
Does this have access to the real sdcard? Could be useful for some maintenance tasks.

A kernel driver could be written, but I have not implemented it yet. If you make an issue on the github with what you'd want it to be able to do i can look into making it

Cain21 said:
Is this for the new 3ds family only as on my old 3ds xl I'm getting an error saying failed to allocate 33554432 bytes of RAM

I honestly haven't put work into supporting it, i only have a 3ds ll. If you want I can try making an image with less ram for you to try. please make an issue on the github for this

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 9:47 PM

For anyone wondering, here's the coremark results for it haha... actually a bit better than I expected but yeah it sure isn't fast

SpaceGameJunkie · Sunday at 12:26 AM

What a fascinating thing. I love all the things this little machine can do and the amazing people making it do these things.

cmdada · 2026-06-03T20:20:26+0100

SpaceGameJunkie said:
What a fascinating thing. I love all the things this little machine can do and the amazing people making it do these things.

thanks!

cmdada said:
Yup, although it'll run pretty much anywhere you can get libc to compile, I first used mini-rv32ima on an atmel processor of all things

I did realize subsequent to this it's running on the arm11 cores :3

Homebrew app Emulator [Release] 3DS-CLI - Run a real RISC-V Linux environment on the Nintendo 3DS

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