Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

Meneer Jansen

Did a little experiment to see if dispmanx and SDL get confused by (re)setting a framebuffer. They (or one of them) do.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ fbset --verbose
Linux Frame Buffer Device Configuration Version 2.1 (23/06/1999)
(C) Copyright 1995-1999 by Geert Uytterhoeven

Opening frame buffer device `/dev/fb0'
Using current video mode from `/dev/fb0'

mode "616x456"
    geometry 616 456 616 456 32
    timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,8/24
endmode

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ fbset -depth 8
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ fbset --verbose
Linux Frame Buffer Device Configuration Version 2.1 (23/06/1999)
(C) Copyright 1995-1999 by Geert Uytterhoeven

Opening frame buffer device `/dev/fb0'
Using current video mode from `/dev/fb0'

mode "616x456"
    geometry 616 456 616 456 8
    timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    rgba 8/0,8/0,8/0,0/0
endmode

After setting the framebuffer to 8 bit I can get it back the way it was: the command fbset -depth 32 will do the trick. However, pcsx-rearmed (the PSX emulator) still wont start in Emulationstation (Mame does) and pressing F4 to escape to the command line leaves me w/ a black non-respensive TV. Only thing I can do is reboot the Pi via ssh.

We really need help on this from somebody who knows everything about graphics on computers.

Meneer Jansen

@mediamogul said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@meneer-jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

There is something very, very strange going on w/ Retropie, SDL, dispmanx, framebuffer and 256 colors.

From what I keep hearing, the problems likely boil down to SDL in some way. I keep reading post after post that updates usually break just as many things as they fix.

That's why I live by the saying "If it ain't broken don't try to fix it". So many, many, many, many times I've been left w/ a system that does not work after an "update" that I hate updating anything with a passion! I'm afraid that after "updating" Retropie I'm, again, left w/ some non-working emulators. What a mess!

P.S. SDL2 does not seem to work w/ framebuffer, SDL1 does. Maybe I've somehow gotten sdl version 1 because I'm on a Pi 1 B+?

mitu

@meneer-jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

P.S. SDL2 does not seem to work w/ framebuffer, SDL1 does. Maybe I've somehow gotten sdl version 1 because I'm on a Pi 1 B+?

That's not really accurate, ES is SDL2 regardless of the PI system used and it works fine. So is RetroArch.

Meneer Jansen

@mitu said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@meneer-jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

P.S. SDL2 does not seem to work w/ framebuffer, SDL1 does. Maybe I've somehow gotten sdl version 1 because I'm on a Pi 1 B+?

That's not really accurate, ES is SDL2 regardless of the PI system used and it works fine. So is RetroArch.

Okay. Thank you for that info. So the fact that I have a Pi 1 is not the reason that it (sometimes) works on my system.

edmaul69

@mitu so my issue i believe comes down to dispmanx isnt working at all on basilisk. I can never get 256 color to work because of this. With dispmanx turned on i can get 32 bit mode to boot which it shouldnt which tells me the dispmanx isnt working. Do you know how i can reinstall the dispmanx?

Edit: i used to have it working and never updated anything other than retropie setup

Meneer Jansen

@People having trouble starting BasiliskII in 256 color mode: try starting BII without the config file from Retropie. I.e. delete the following line from /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/emulators.cfg:

--config /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg

I can start BII in 256 mode from a terminal in a graphical user interface (a GUI called "Pixel") on my Raspberry Pi. I installed Raspbian first and Retropie afterwards: you guys might not have a GUI installed. But I experience terrible crashes (segfaults) when I use Retropie's config file.

You can install the Pixel desktop enviroment (formerly LXDE) w/ the RaspberryPie setup script (sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh ) and then choosing: Configuration / Tools >> Raspbiantools >> Install Pixel Desktop Environment . You can exit Emulationstation with F4 and then start a GUI with the command startx.

Strange thing is that I cannot find anything in the BII config file regarding graphics mode...

mediamogul

@meneer-jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

I can start BII in 256 mode from a terminal in a graphical user interface

This jibes with everything I've been reading. There are quite a few threads outside of this forum where people just can't get 8-bit color working on the Pi without the Pixel desktop environment. I think this is a situation where we had a hacky workaround that was on borrowed time. I've tried quite a few things and can only get 8-bit colors without crashing maybe one out of twenty times. Personally, I'm not too keen on having a full desktop environment on my setup just to service the few games I'm interested in that would need it, so I'll probably just make do with titles using a higher color pallet.

Meneer Jansen

@mediamogul said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@meneer-jansen said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

I can start BII in 256 mode from a terminal in a graphical user interface

This jibes with everything I've been reading. There are quite a few threads outside of this forum where people just can't get 8-bit color working on the Pi without the Pixel desktop environment. I think this is a situation where we had a hacky workaround that was on borrowed time. I've tried quite a few things and can only get 8-bit colors without crashing maybe one out of twenty times. Personally, I'm not too keen on having a full desktop environment on my setup just to service the few games I'm interested in that would need it, so I'll probably just make do with titles using a higher color pallet.

If you still have some time and energy left then you could try it from within Emulationstation but without the Retropie config file, i.e. delete the following line from /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/emulators.cfg:

--config /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg

mediamogul

@meneer-jansen

Sure, it's certainly worth a shot. I'll give it a try this evening.

mediamogul

@meneer-jansen

Sadly, it was a no-go.

mediamogul

Holy carp, I think I may have made progress. I've now been able to boot ten times in a row with 8-bit color by adding:

displaycolordepth 8

to /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg in conjunction with changing the framebuffer color depth using the onstart/onend script method. I don't want to start celebrating just yet, but my success rate has gone from 1/20 to 10/10.

From what I'm reading in a few places, there are apparently several undocumented settings that have been added since main BII development ended in 2006. That got me looking for such an addition that might help us out and I ran across this posting. I first tried it without the onstart/onend trick, but it blacked out the screen during startup.

edmaul69

@mediamogul ok so just adding this and the runcommand stuff is working? I will definitely try this when i get home.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

It seems to be working at the moment. More testing could shake some bugs loose, but it's looking positive.

edmaul69

@mediamogul i will have to check since i cant get it to boot at all in 256 since dispmanx isnt working.

edmaul69

@mediamogul so because dispmanx doesnt work setting the setting in basiliskii.cfg now i cant get it to work on any image other than one that was made in the vmac for pc that i use for my grayscale image. No boot sequence then crash that i got before. I wish i knew how to fix the dispmanx.

Meneer Jansen

@mediamogul said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

Holy carp, I think I may have made progress. I've now been able to boot ten times in a row with 8-bit color by adding:
displaycolordepth 8
to /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg in conjunction with changing the framebuffer color depth using the onstart/onend script method. I don't want to start celebrating just yet, but my success rate has gone from 1/20 to 10/10.

From what I'm reading in a few places, there are apparently several undocumented settings that have been added since main BII development ended in 2006. That got me looking for such an addition that might help us out and I ran across this posting. I first tried it without the onstart/onend trick, but it blacked out the screen during startup.

Wow! Pretty good Sherlock Holmes work there. Didn't know that there were undocumented config options for BII.

Meneer Jansen

@edmaul69 said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@mediamogul so because dispmanx doesnt work setting the setting in basiliskii.cfg now i cant get it to work on any image other than one that was made in the vmac for pc that i use for my grayscale image. No boot sequence then crash that i got before. I wish i knew how to fix the dispmanx.

How did you deduce know that dispmanx isn't working? If I do not enable dispmanx for pcsx-rearmed, then I cannot play PSX games. So it does seem to work or at least do something...

I have lots of troubles w/ dispmanx too. A few days ago pcsx-rearmed (PSX) emulator wouldn't work w/ HDMI and full screen enabled via /boot/config.txt. Now it won't work at all! What an unpredictable system Retropie is. Or is it SDL? Or is it dispmanx? Some serious research needs to be done by a developer or a tester w/ knowledge of Retropie and video modes and such. :-(

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen before i couldnt run basilisk in millions of colors with dispmanx on. So to set it up for 256 i had to set it to b&w. Then i turn on dispmanx and then run b&w basilisk and change it to 256 color. If i set any thing in runcommand, in basiliskii.cfg it wont boot at all. If i switch from b&w to 256 it crashes. All these used to work correctly as long as dispmanx was turned on.

Meneer Jansen

@edmaul69 said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

@meneer-jansen before i couldnt run basilisk in millions of colors with dispmanx on. So to set it up for 256 i had to set it to b&w. Then i turn on dispmanx and then run b&w basilisk and change it to 256 color. If i set any thing in runcommand, in basiliskii.cfg it wont boot at all. If i switch from b&w to 256 it crashes. All these used to work correctly as long as dispmanx was turned on.

Thanks for the info. Indeed, without dispmanx it BasiliskII does not work on my Pi either.

Meneer Jansen

My personal HowTo up until now for 'Prince of Persia 2 - The shadow and the Flame':

General procedure

Install BasiliskII via the Retropie script.
Download the "PoP Macintosh Total Pack" for Windows. It includes the Mac version of PoP2. Install this "Pack" in Windows (or Wine). Go to: "C:/Program Files/Oldgames/Prince of Persia 2 Mac".
From that Windows dir copy the files "emulation.rom", "Starterdisk.hfv" and "Oldgames.hfv" to:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh

Rename those files to "mac.rom", "disk.img" and "disk02.img". The first is the BIOS for a Mac, the second a disk image containing the operating system etc. and the last is another disk image (that will automatically be mounted by the first) containing the Pop2 game.
Add the following line to: /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/emulators.cfg:

--disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/disk02.img

It will read:

basilisk = "/opt/retropie/emulators/basilisk/bin/BasiliskII --rom /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/mac.rom --disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/disk.img --disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/disk02.img --extfs /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh --config /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg"
default = "basilisk"

Remark: I do not know if these disk images are "pre-set" to 256 (= 8 bit) colors (because PoP2 needs a Mac to be in that color mode!). The problem is that BasiliskII crashes on 8 bit colors (not less or more!) if certain options aren't properly set (see next steps). If make sure that the disk image from which you boot the virtual Mac (in this case: disk.img) is not yet in 8 bit color (= 256 colors) mode!

Start BasiliskII and set the color mode to 16 gray shades (because thousands of colors and millions of colors for some people won’t run with dispmanx on, see next steps) by clicking the Apple logo at the upper left hand side and choosing:
Control panels --> Monitors --> tick "Grays" and "16".
Edit /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg and add the following line (this is an undocumented option/hack that was recently built in, see this link):

displaycolordepth 8

(else: conflict between dispmanx and the color mode of your virtual Mac; I think that dispmanx want to set colors to > 8 bit for SDL but PoP2 demands it to be no more than 8 bit)

While you're editing that file change the frameskip setting too, so that it reads:
frameskip 0
Hattrick: enable dispmanx in Emulationstation/Retropie (needed to run in 8 bit color (=256 color) mode). Go into the Retropie Menu (in Emulationstation), go into 'Retropie Setup'. In there go into 'Configuration/Tools', then go into 'Dispmanx' choose "enable" for basilisk so it is enabled.
Set the virtual Mac to 256 colors (8 bit color) in BasiliskII.
Pray that it works.

Runcommand and framebuffer

For some reason it's not needed on my Pi to use, what I call, the "framebuffer set to 8 bit" method. Even stranger: it makes BasiliskII and the Pi crash. However, BalisiskII is very tricky to get working in 8 bit color mode so the following steps might help some people in the future to get this emulator to work, or to help determining a problem:

Add two scripts to /opt/retropie/configs/all/ and make them executable:

runcommand-onstart.sh
runcommand-onend.sh
Fill the "onstart script" with the following to set the framebuffer to 8 bit (= 256 colors) (for dispmanx which is a sort of window manager for SDL if there is no win. mgr.??):

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "macintosh" ] 
   then
   fbset -depth 8
fi

Fill that other script with the same, but now set the framebuffer back to 32 bit.
Another thing that might help. Delete the following two hidden files in your home dir:

/home/pi/.basilisk_ii_prefs
/home/pi/.basilisk_ii_xpram

Pray that it works.

Tips and hints:

Set /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/ as your second drive instead of an image. That way you can just put Apple programs in there and then install them inside basilisk.
Some swear by another method which is the only one that works for them. This is described in two posts in an Italian forum. The first describes how to make your own MacOS compatible hard disk image. The second how to set the virtual Mac to 256 colors.

Just my 2 cents. ;-)

[last edited on March 11 2018] Thanks to @mediamogul, @edmaul69, @spud11 and @FranceMSR.