GBA BIOS Info


In order for GBARunner2 to load titles, a dump of the GBA BIOS is required. Newer builds of GBARunner2 (which come with the latest release of TWiLight Menu++) have Normatt’s Open Source BIOS built-in. However, because it is not an exact copy, using a dump of the official BIOS increases compatibility. You can dump an official GBA BIOS with one of the following methods.

Dumping Guides #

After dumping the BIOS, it must be renamed to bios.bin and then should be placed in sd:/, sd:/gba/, or sd:/_gba/ for GBARunner2 to read it.

You can verify that your BIOS is a proper dump by comparing it with the following checksums:

GBA/GBA SP/Game Boy Micro/Game Boy Player:

  • CRC-32: 81977335
  • MD5: a860e8c0b6d573d191e4ec7db1b1e4f6
  • SHA-1: 300c20df6731a33952ded8c436f7f186d25d3492
  • SHA-256: fd2547724b505f487e6dcb29ec2ecff3af35a841a77ab2e85fd87350abd36570

DS/DS Lite/3DS Family:

  • CRC-32: a6473709
  • MD5: 1c0d67db9e1208b95a1506b1688a0ad6
  • SHA-1: c11531d5261006810cdc954bd4bec0afe3187b35
  • SHA-256: 782eb3894237ec6aa411b78ffee19078bacf10413856d33cda10b44fd9c2856b

If you don’t know how to obtain a file checksum, you can use an online checksum calculator.