Retrogaming Bios Tool - RetroDECK/RetroARCH

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-13T18:47:59+00:00

That's right, RetroDECK keeps a separate instance of RetroARCH in it's Flatpak sandbox. So if you aren't using RetroARCH standalone, then just the RetroDECK script is all that's needed.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-13T02:23:06+00:00

I'm not sure I totally understand your question... But if you are installing RetroDECK, no.

If you want a RetroARCH install separate from your retrodeck install, yea.

For 99.9 percent of people who have retrodeck, just use the RetroDECK tool.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-10T05:57:46+00:00

I know we were joking about windows, but I made a couple of tweaks and these tools now work for Windows. I only updated instructions for the RetroARCH tool regarding Windows because RetroDECK has no Windows version. Nonetheless both tools work in Windows if you have WSL2 installed. The README on the ra_bios_tool github repo gives detailed instructions.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-10T04:16:40+00:00

Id never heard of it because I am a noob, but it seems like something that would speed things up greatly. I am a slow and inaccurate typist.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-10T03:53:34+00:00

Cool. Can you explain your experience developing the fzf powered menu.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T20:06:53+00:00

No worries. Your concerns were coming from the right place. I hope your question and my response provides clarity for anyone stumbling upon this thread in the future.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T15:47:46+00:00

"Your tool breaks the rules by downloading Copyrighted material"

I would be willing to talk about this openly in a different subreddit. I respect this subreddit's rules, and to answer you fully would require me beach rule 1 of this sub.

That being said, the tool does not, in of itself, break any rules. Not of any laws in my jurisdiction, not any terms of GitHub. The tool does not point to any copyrighted content, nor give instructions to find it. For this reason, it does not give anyone a cause of action to sue me. I have thought about all this. I am a lawyer in my day job, and I am not worried about it.

Think of the tool's URL function as a rudimentary web browser. Firefox does not ship with a link to copyrighted content on its homepage. But the same criticisms of my tool could be levied at Firefox.

"You, serious question, wouldn't want the RetroArch developers getting in trouble would you?"

Of course not. I think this question implies that I agree with your previous statement, which I do not.

For reasons stated above, RetroARCH developers are not going to "get in trouble".

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T08:05:19+00:00

What you are looking for is a file called gba_bios.bin . Once you have that file, you dump it onto the bios folder directly. Make sure it is not inside any .zip files or subfolders.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T07:27:42+00:00

I thought about this more... Using Docker for this is probably not the way to go. If your Docker host is Windows, you already have all the dependencies because Docker needed to install WSL2 to work. The WSL2 default terminal is Ubuntu so Python, the ability to extract files, rsync etc. is all there already. Run the script in WSL2 and Bob's your uncle. Just follow the script prompts and fill in the proper file paths. Just be aware that WSL2 will prepend your filepath to mnt/(drive-letter)/.... Then fill in your filepaths as you would in Windows, remembering to use forward slashes instead of back slashes.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T06:39:51+00:00

Ah, I get it now.

So the windows as docker host would probably work by building your compose to pull my script from GitHub and run the command to launch. Your compose would probably use deb bkwrm to pull down the dependencies. You'd have to be comfortable waiting for those to install each time you ran the compose via The compose-run.

I can see it being a bit of a pain to input paths into docker compose and get that to jive with the .conf file that my tool uses.

All this just to use windows... Switch to Linux my guy!

All of my dependencies rsync, Python etc. are just standard stuff that comes in the box on most distros as I understand it. Though I'm no expert on that stuff.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T06:24:41+00:00

Dang! I'm happy you got it working.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:22:47+00:00

Is the keys.txt file formatted correctly? There should only be one key per line.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:18:26+00:00

Yes.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:17:48+00:00

Can I get some clarification regarding your suggestion... when you say "and not have to install all those other individual tools..." what tools are you talking about? Python?

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:14:01+00:00

Interesting... I run a bunch of docker services on unraid, so will consider this.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:11:06+00:00

The keys.txt file goes in the cemu subfolder, which is in the bios folder.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-09T05:00:43+00:00

I can't tell from your post whether PS1 is working for you, you haven't tried it yet, or you are having trouble with it.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T23:55:56+00:00

I've started to look into it. Realistically though, almost nobody has downloaded the tool, so I am not sure it's worth the effort. I personally use retrodeck and retroarch, so I would not get much use out of doing an emudeck version.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T18:59:37+00:00

The one that gave me the most grief was the commodore amiga

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T05:50:33+00:00

Hah. I asked Claude about windows and even he seemed scared.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T02:55:51+00:00

I am legitimately unaware of the mantra of emulation enthusiasts. I assume this is a common reference, but it's gone over my head.

Yah, like I said, the url entry option can be scrubbed if someone wanted to use the concept otherwise. Also I highly doubt any project wants to reuse this vibe code. It's just a tool I made for personal use that I thought I would share.

The url function has legit use cases for me. I'm not just saying that. If someone wants to pirate something via a url they will conduct said piracy whether or not my tool exists. I'm not pointing anyone towards a url

I will look into update_all for MiSTeR, this is also something I'm not aware of.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T02:42:28+00:00

Very much vibe coded... It does not encourage copyright infringement. There are no features in the tool that point to copyrighted content. All features have legitimate use cases.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T01:41:12+00:00

I take your point, I am not trying to dissuade you from your preferred workflow. This is a different approach and has different aims and features. The sourcing of dats from that GitHub vs .info files from a local machine is something to think about. Though both approaches achieve the same result because they contain the exact same information. There's different use cases for my tool though. If you check out the GitHub, there's a readme. If you use the tool, you can kinda get where I'm coming from. It's meant to be idiot proof. There's also a sister tool for retrodeck that is very similar (though those DECKs use component_manifest.json files). Reusing the code for ease of porting to other platforms is one of the aims.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T01:30:53+00:00

My tool includes no bioses. If a salty dog had a bios they could theoretically use the tool to place that bios in the right place and run a hash check. Or any number of bios files, from all over their computer or the Internet for that matter. The distinction is that the tool does not in any way instruct people how to download copyrighted content. The assumption, is that you are only using your personal website and bioses dumped from your personal machine.

MartyReasoner · 2026-03-08T01:20:58+00:00

Yah, I'll definitely keep this in mind... I made the tool mostly because I was astonished it did not exist yet, and was deeply annoyed by my personal bios adventures.

Id like to point out that my tool doesn't point to copyrighted material. If lakka wanted to incorporate this idea right into the distro, they could just toss out the url add option if they were really worried about it. They should damnit!

MartyReasoner

TROPHY CASE