BIOS Dumping Guide for Emulators - 16 Bit Guide

  • 11 hours ago
Today I will be showing you how you can get a GBA, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 1, and PlayStation 2 BIOS File for your emulators. From the hardware you might already own. Or Open Source alternative from the community.

~~Time Codes~~

00:00 Why you need a BIOS File
01:06 Support us from 16 Bit Store
01:39 Intro
01:48 Not all Emulators need BIOS
02:12 Open Source GBA BIOS
03:05 Open Source PS1 BIOS
03:54 PS1 and PS2 BIOS from PS3 Firmware
05:25 The issues with Getting BIOS From Real Hardware
06:19 PS1 BIOS
08:35 PS2 Homebrew
09:50 PS2 BIOS
10:48 GBA BIOS Hardware
12:03 GBA BIOS from 3DS Virtual Console
12:28 DS BIOS and Firmware
13:03 How Far Emulators have come
13:16 Dual Screen DS with iPad
13:30 Wide Screen PS1
13:35 60FPS PS2

~~References~~

PS1 BIOS Dumper Utility: https://github.com/ShendoXT/biosdumper

GBA BIOS Dumping Guide: https://glazedbelmont.github.io/gbabiosdump/

PS2 FreeHDBoot: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/free-hdboot.26555/

PCSX2 Dumping Guide: https://pcsx2.net/docs/setup/bios

BIOSDrain: https://github.com/F0bes/biosdrain

DS BIOS Dumper: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/dsbf_dump

Normatt GBA BIOS: https://github.com/Nebuleon/ReGBA/tree/master/bios

PCSX Redux: https://github.com/grumpycoders/pcsx-redux

PS BIOS Claim: https://archive.org/details/firmware_bios_claim_release1

PS3 Firmware Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gah74XQcezc

PS3 Firmware Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6LQhX9Vjyg

PS3 Firmware Written Guide: https://retrogamecorps.com/2023/02/17/ps2-and-ps1-bios-extraction-guide/

PS3 Firmware: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps3/system-software/

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Transcript
00:00Hello and welcome! I like playing games on their original hardware just as much as the
00:06next guy, but it's really hard to ignore the temptations and benefits of emulation.
00:12Not only will you be able to play your games on any device with cross-platform saves and
00:18whatnot, but you'll also be able to continue playing your games even after the hardware
00:23has completely fallen apart. At least until the emulator refuses to even start without
00:30some arbitrary firmware or BIOS files. Well, if, like me, you've already put the effort
00:38in to go and back up your physical games in the first place, then it's not too much of
00:44a stretch to go and obtain your own BIOS files from your own hardware, at least if you have
00:53the right accessories. So today I'll show you how I was able to back up my BIOS files
01:00for my PlayStation 1, 2, my Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance systems. But before I do,
01:08this video is brought to you by us and The 16-Bit Store. If you're looking to spruce
01:13up your collection by displaying your consoles or cleaning up your controllers, then why
01:18not check out what we have on offer at 16-Bit Store. Heck, if you have an e-reader, we even
01:25make fully repairable e-reader cases. If you're interested in anything that I've been stating
01:31or you want to support the channel, why not visit 16BitStore.com today? The links will
01:37be in the description below.
01:40Now not every emulator requires a BIOS file, and if you're familiar with playing Game Boy
01:54Advance games on RetroArch, you'll probably know that most GBA cores don't need a BIOS
02:01to play the games. Well, the reason for that is partly because sometimes the system just
02:09doesn't need the original BIOS to work. But other times, especially with the Game Boy
02:15Advance emulators, they do require one, but the community has developed open source versions
02:22or open source compatible BIOS files that work. For example, GBA temp user Normat created
02:29the open source BIOS for the Game Boy Advance that's used in a lot of modern day emulators.
02:36If you go into any of these libretro cores that use it, you'll find a reference to a
02:43compiled version of Normat's BIOS. If you were to, let's say, download that BIOS file
02:48and just force the emulator to boot from it, you will see that it does work and without
02:56issue. So if you have an older PSP and you're looking for a GBA BIOS, this is an excellent
03:00spot to get your hands on one without getting original hardware. And it's not just the Game
03:05Boy Advance that has its own open source BIOS file. PSX Redux is an open source reverse
03:13engineering project for the PlayStation 1, and this team developed their own open source
03:19BIOS, which actually, apparently, works with original hardware. But in our case, it works
03:24perfectly fine with Duckstation, and all you need to do to get it is to download the PSX
03:29Redux Windows build and just get the open source BIOS and throw it in. From my testing,
03:35both the Game Boy Advance BIOS and the PSX Redux BIOS works perfectly fine with most
03:41of the games, and I've not noticed any significant differences between it and the official BIOS
03:48file set you can still get from the original hardware. I'll go into those later on in the
03:53video. While I will recommend using open source BIOS files when possible, and thank the communities
04:00who are making them, there is a possibility that you can get official BIOS images from
04:06the internet with some work without having to raise the Jolly Roger. At least, that's
04:12the case for PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 files. You see, Sony's been bundling the
04:18PS1 and PS2 files with PS3 firmware updates for years now, and thanks to the YouTube channel
04:25Easy on the Eyes and the Retro Game Corpse channels, there are easy tutorials for how
04:31to get them. But, it is genuinely dead simple and straightforward. All you have to do is
04:38download a PS3 update file, download the RCPS3 emulator, and install the firmware update
04:47to the emulator. Then, all you need to do is download the BIOS claim tool and run it
04:57as the README describes in the main folder, and you'll get your hands on not only a PS1
05:03BIOS, but a PS2 BIOS, which works excellently in DuckStation and PC-XS2. If you want a more
05:12detailed description, I'll link Retro Game Corpse's website, as it has simple links. Also,
05:17link below the archive.org repository for the BIOS claim tool, as it has a good README guide
05:24for how to get everything. But, not every system will have its own open source BIOS files or have
05:31a way to claim a BIOS file from a system update. If you have a Nintendo DS, for example, and want
05:37to play a DS game on your iPad, you will need original hardware and a way to run Homebrew on
05:44it. And that's going to be probably the biggest wall into emulation that you will find. Being
05:50able to get the BIOS is actually quite easy. It's usually just in one system package that's
05:57runnable in Homebrew, and it just dumps it for you. The hard part is actually getting to the
06:02point where that system can run the Homebrew in the first place, either because the hardware
06:07is expensive or the process is convoluted. So, I want to go through how to dump your BIOS files
06:13from a couple of systems, just to show you how to do it and what you'll need to do it. For PlayStation
06:21games, dumping the BIOS requires no special hardware to actually dump the files, since the
06:28PlayStation 1's copy protection is easily bypassable if you're quick enough with the CD swap trick.
06:35This method allows you to run pirated PS1 games or backed-up PS1 games on your PS1 system, or,
06:41in our case, allows you to run the PS1 dumping tool on the hardware. This tool dumps the PS1 BIOS
06:50into five parts to the PS1 memory card. And here is where you're actually going to run into a
06:57problem, because now you have to find a way to dump your PS1 memory card to your computer. Now,
07:03you could buy third-party PS1 memory cards that'll save it to an SD card, and you're good to go
07:10there. But if you don't and only have official hardware, then you're going to either need a USB
07:16to memory card adapter, which are elusive, or you'll need a modified PS2 or a PS2 that can run
07:24Homebrew in order to go into UELF Launcher to copy the raw data from the memory card and mc-paste it
07:33onto a USB flash stick. You have to use mc-paste, or else it will not copy over correctly. I had
07:42this happen twice, and it was not fun. But once you've copied over the raw save files,
07:48then you can use a PSX memory card manager like Memcard Rex to go and insert it into a virtual
07:56memory card format that the BIOS merge tool that comes with your BIOS dumper can recognize.
08:05And once you're done, run the program in a terminal, and you have yourself a complete PS1 BIOS.
08:13Enjoy the classic blong every time the system boots. On that note, you can also use the same
08:21method on a PSP in order to get the PSP's PS1 BIOS. You'll have to convert the PSP's PS1 memory
08:29card saves so that it works, but the process is effectively the same. For PS2 BIOS files,
08:37in order for you to dump it, you're going to need to run Homebrew on the PS2, and to do that,
08:43you're going to need one of these. This is a PS2 memory card with FreeMCBoot installed on it.
08:50You can buy these on eBay for like next to nothing, and it's highly worth to get your
08:56hands on one of them. But if you don't want to spend the money or don't trust these things,
09:00then what you can do is you can buy yourself a PS2 to the SATA adapter,
09:04plug an old hard drive in or get yourself a SATA hard drive of a low capacity,
09:08and copy the FreeHDBoot image file to the drive. I'll have links below for where to get that as
09:16well as some guides to go and install FreeHDBoot. To get the BIOS, all you really need is a FreeMCBoot,
09:22but if you use FreeHDBoot, you'll get access to things like the OpenPS2 Loader that'll let you go
09:27and not just run your PS2 games from the hard drive, but also have virtual memory cards that'll
09:32allow you to have infinite save files, which is a godsend compared to how small these things are.
09:40Plus, with FreeHDBoot installed, you can also create your own FreeMCBoot cards,
09:46so it kind of leads as a good backup utility. Once your PS2 is capable of running homebrew,
09:52then I'll highly advise you to go to the PCxx2 website and go to their Gathering Files page.
10:00It's an excellent wiki guide for how to go and dump your BIOS files, and it'll most likely keep
10:05up to date with which dumper utilities you will want to get. Currently, PCxx2 is recommending a
10:12BIOS utility called BIOSDrain, and all you need to do to run it is to put it onto a USB flash drive,
10:19plug it into your PS2, load ULaunchElf, and go to your USB and run the program. It should dump it
10:28automatically, though if you run into issues where it can't see your flash drive, you may want to
10:33switch with another flash drive, since it does have a little bit of compatibility with maybe
10:39older or some newer drives. I had to go through two before mine would work. And when you're done,
10:44just load the files into your emulator and it'll work perfectly. For the Game Boy Advance BIOS
10:50files, there's actually a couple of ways to get it, and you don't even need a Game Boy Advance
10:54if you have a 3DS with Virtual Console games installed onto it. But if you have a Game Boy
11:00Advance or a Nintendo DS, the easiest way to get the BIOS file is through the EZFlash or an EverDrive
11:08and the BIOSDump ROM. Just put the ROM onto an EZFlash and run it on your system, wait for the
11:17screen to go from red to green, and you're good to go, because the game will generate a save file
11:24that contains your BIOS. Now the save file will be pretty big, so all you need to do is run the
11:29included Python script to trim the save down so that it just contains the BIOS file. If you don't
11:37have Python installed onto your system, it's pretty easy if you go through the terminal and
11:41type in Python. If you're on a Windows system, it will instantly open you to the Windows 10 store,
11:48and it'll let you download and install it so that it will work. Now there is another way to get your
11:54hands on a Game Boy Advance BIOS file if you have Game Boy Color or Game Boy eShop Virtual Console
12:01titles on your 3DS systems. If you watch our How to Extract ROMs video, you'll see a specific file
12:09as you're browsing through the ROMFS folder called agb.bin. Believe it or not, this is the complete
12:17Game Boy Advance BIOS file just sitting there mostly unused from what I can tell. All you have
12:24to do is just dump this and you're good to go. To get your hands on the Nintendo DS BIOS and firmware
12:32files, all you'll need is a simple flash cart like this R4 cart or any of the modern ones that you'll
12:39find on Amazon or eBay. This is something I highly recommend in general, but all you need to do is
12:45download the dsbfdump.nds file and just put it on the root of your SD card, launch your DS or 3DS
12:52systems, and just run the applications. When the process is done, you'll find a folder on the root
12:58of your SD card that contains all the necessary BIOS and firmware files. And the process for getting
13:04your BIOS from other systems that I haven't mentioned usually follows the same format.
13:09And with a BIOS file and emulation, I am shocked with just how far the technology has come. I never
13:17dreamt of a day that I'll be able to take my Apple iPad, plug it into a third-party monitor,
13:24and play proper dual-screen DS with a controller and a functioning touchscreen. Let alone being
13:31able to see the PS1 Harry Potter games in widescreen or seeing PlayStation 2 games run at 60
13:40frames a second. It's absolutely shocking just how far emulation has come in the last few years,
13:47and I really need to explore it in more depth in a future video. But anyways, thank you ever so
13:54much for watching, I hope you have yourself a good day, and, as always, take care.