DraStic

Try moving the ROMs to the phone's internal storage.

What happens if you don't turn off the protection?

Hmmm.. I believe DraStic comes with its own BIOS. I have a bios-.zip file in my DraStic folder and don't remember putting it there myself.

If this is the case, you probably didn't get the app from the Play store and should try that.

I believe it has something to do with storage permisssions in newer versions of Android. In my case at least, I didn't have this issue before I updated to Android 11..

Hopefully this is fixable somehow but in the meantime I've resorted to moving all my ROMs to the internal memory.

I realize I'm late to the party, but what you have to do is: Charge the controller up to 100%, put the controller into mode 3 using home + X, and then pair it with your device.