Boot to BIOS - From a file!

RetroArch General
#1

This originally started as me writing a request for help, but as I wrote it and researched I figured it out and… well honestly I just wanna share this 'cause I think it’s cool (although probably kind of useless, really).

My goal was to figure out how to exploit the functions of RetroArch’s CLI commands to create a .bat file that I could point my frontend at (such as LaunchBox) as if it were a game. This would allow me to pull up the system’s menu without having to go through the usual steps

  • Open Game
  • Open Quick Menu
  • Go to Options
  • Toggle “on” Boot to BIOS
  • Close RetroArch
  • Re-Open Game
  • Enjoy BIOS Menu
  • Open Quick Menu
  • Toggle “off” Boot to BIOS
  • Close RetroArch

Now I can just choose the system’s menu from my frontend, and it won’t affect anything else, and sidestep all of that dancing. Granted, you don’t really ‘need’ to go into the menu, but I do love accessibility in regards to preserving experience, so I wanted to be able to pull these menus up whenever I wanted.

So, without further blah blah, here’s how I did that (on Windows), using the Flycast core as an example:

  1. Navigate to “/RetroArch/config/flycast” and create a text file called “~BIOS.opt” then open that file in your text editor and put in the following line:

reicast_boot_to_bios = "enabled"

  1. In your Dreamcast game folder, create an empty text file with the name “~BIOS.chd”

  2. Create another text file and rename it “~BIOS.bat” and put in the following line changing your directories as needed :

"X:\Emulators\RetroArch\retroarch.exe" -L "X:\Emulators\RetroArch\cores\flycast_libretro.dll" -c "X:\Emulators\RetroArch\retroarch.cfg" "X:\Games\Sega Dreamcast\~BIOS.chd"

…and that’s it! Now your .bat will tell RetroArch to open Flycast, use the dummy .chd, and call on the .opt file to boot to the BIOS. No more toggling back and forth.

Doing this, I setup my frontend with this little custom option:

Sega Dreamcast Internal Menu
Sega Dreamcast Internal Menu1920×1080 619 KB

Anyway, I hope someone else finds this useful. Couldn’t have done it without the awesome docs.libretro.com section of the site, and the --help command it pointed me towards.

I guess let me know if there is a better way to do this lol, but I’m gonna go try this out with a few other cores and see what sticks.

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