I didn’t want to hijack a somewhat similar thread, but I had an idea and really wanted some input, 'cause I think this is a really cool idea. If this works it’s easily going to become my pet project for the next while.
Let’s say we have a fully setup install of RetroArch, the Windows version (as it’s what I’m familiar with)
What I propose is the following:
We take something like a CD, burn a single game ONTO the disc. That is to say, we don’t burn the disc as a copy, we burn it as a DATA disc. So the structure would be something like “D:” for the disc drive, then we have the bin/cue file (or what have you) on the disc. So…
“D:\Sonic CD.cue” “D:\Sonic CD.bin”
Then, we create an autorun file. This tells Windows when we put in the CD to start retroarch with the proper core, points it at the .cue file and launches the game. Somewhat similar to how we use a frontend, only instead of us initiating from a menu and a button press it happens when the CD is put in the drive.
Theoretically we can take this further as well…
We could setup a save directory as the same drive as an SD slot and BOOM… we have memory cards!
There’s a myriad of ways we could do ‘cartridges’ too, or at least ‘hard’ physical games. I’ve seen someone modify a floppy drive to take floppy disks with SD cards inside them. We could easily write cartridge games to these using the same principles as the CD method above.
Unless my understanding of how autorun files work (which is admittedly very little)… Then this is totally possible… right!!!
