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Reicast
Type standalone
Classification Community forks
Source https://github.com/reicast/reicast-emulator
Version Git
Revision reicast/reicast-emulator@ad61f95dd6b4
Profiled 2026-10-17
Profile YAML, JSON
Cores reicast
Systems sega-dreamcast
Technical notes

Dreamcast emulator descended from nullDC. The Linux build is compiled for one platform, and the default is dreamcast, which sets the ROM prefix dc_, a 2 MB boot ROM, a 128 KB flash and NVR_OPTIONAL 0 (ref: core/types.h:209-217).

LoadRomFiles() tries dc_boot.bin, dc_boot.bin.bin, dc_bios.bin and dc_bios.bin.bin for the boot ROM, then dc_nvmem.bin, dc_flash_wb.bin, dc_flash.bin and dc_flash.bin.bin for the flash (ref: core/hw/holly/sb_mem.cpp:30-51). Each candidate is accepted when a full chip's worth of bytes can be read from it (ref: core/hw/flashrom/flashrom.h:39-49, 61-99). No hash is checked. With NVR_OPTIONAL 0 a missing flash fails LoadRomFiles() the same way a missing boot ROM does.

When LoadRomFiles() fails, or the reios setting is on, the core starts its HLE BIOS instead and loads only the flash, if present (ref: core/nullDC.cpp:183-200, core/hw/holly/sb_mem.cpp:58-64).

Upstream resolves the directory as <data dir>/data/, the data dir being $XDG_DATA_HOME/reicast or ~/.local/share/reicast, then each $XDG_DATA_DIRS entry plus /reicast (ref: core/stdclass.cpp:83-100, core/linux-dist/main.cpp:287-326, 355-379). Recalbox patches nullDC.cpp to read and write both files in /recalbox/share/bios/dc/, which is the path given below.

2 files | 0 required, 2 optional | 2 in repo, 0 missing | 2 with HLE fallback

dc_boot.bin optional in repo HLE fallback #
Dreamcast boot ROM

dc_nvmem.bin optional in repo HLE fallback #
Dreamcast flash memory

Generated on 2026-10-20T03:49:42Z