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RetroBIOS

Rebuilding an archive

Arcade emulators read their BIOS files from a ZIP archive.

The collection keeps a recipe for each archive. It lists the files inside, in order, with their fingerprints. The recipe and those files make the archive again. No copy from elsewhere is needed.

Rebuild one archive

Section titled “Rebuild one archive”

In a copy of the project:

Terminal window
python scripts/romset_recipes.py --build neogeo.zip --output-dir rebuilt

Each archive of that name is made under rebuilt/, in the folders it has in the collection. It is checked against its recipe before it is kept.

Exact or canonical

Section titled “Exact or canonical”
  • Exact: the same bytes as the archive in the collection. 1,796 of 2,231 archives.
  • Canonical: the same files inside, packed another way. 435 of 2,231 archives. An emulator reads the files inside, so both work the same. A setup that checks the whole archive by its fingerprint needs the exact one.

Every option of the command: tools.

Maintained by Abdess on GitHub. Report a problem.Privacy.

Packs from release v2026.11.10, .

MIT for the tooling and metadata. BIOS and firmware files are third-party system software, preserved for personal backup, archival and interoperability.