Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

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.

mediamogul

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

Pray that it works.

I like that.

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen i decided to just update everything including kernel to see if that fixes it. Somehow i must have chosen to do it from source because it has been running all day. So sometime next year i might be able to finish updating and be able to test.

Meneer Jansen

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

to finish updating and be a

Wow! Compiling a single application from source takes a long time on an average computer. On a Pi it must take days to compile everything! Good luck and have patience. :-)

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen @mediamogul woohoo!! I have it working every time. Just like @Meneer-Jansen i dont have the on-start and on-end settings. It locks my system up too. It works with displaycolordepth8 setting only.

A NOTE TO NEW COMERS: do not add “displaycolordepth8” in basiliskii.cfg and enable dispmanx until/unless you change your color to 16 color b&w first or it is pre setup at 256 colors/16 color b&w.

mediamogul

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

do not set add “displaycolordepth8” in basiliskii.cfg until/unless you change your color to 16 color b&w first or it is pre setup at 256 colors/16 color b&w.

This was likely my problem when I first blacked out on startup. Now that it's set in the Mac environment I'll remove my own onstart/end to confirm.

edmaul69

one thing, my image made from minivmac which is b&w boots with/without sleep 2; but my 256 color image will not boot with it.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

That approach was a nonstarter anyway. It's useful to alleviate possible race conditions in a few cases, but ended up not applying here.

edmaul69

@mediamogul i still cant get it to boot every time. the first time it worked 3 times in a row.then i tried with the on-start/on-end settings and they didnt work and now it wont boot every time for me.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Mine's still launching every time so far, but I still feel like we're all going to be spinning our wheels on shaky ground without an upstream fix. The author of the displaycolordepth8 fix even said that his addition was a hack and almost didn't submit it officially.

I'm not around my setup at the moment, but I'm curious to see what affect removing the onstart/end has for me. I'm betting that, as you say, having the Mac environment previously set to 256 will make all the difference. Did I understand you correctly in that you can potentially stave off a crash by first selecting 'Black & White' before switching to 256? If so, will this also work in reverse as an intermediate step between 256 and a higher setting?

edmaul69

@mediamogul i was mentioning it needing to be changed before enabling dispmanx. I might not have said that correctly.