Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

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.

edmaul69

@mediamogul edited the original post

edmaul69

@mediamogul @Meneer-Jansen can you post youremulators.cfg files?

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Sure...

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

edmaul69

@mediamogul i found my issue of it not booting every time. i had a typo in the basiliskii.cfg. i have the on start and on end set how @Meneer-Jansen posted it. it works all the time now. thank you both.

mediamogul

@edmaul69, @Meneer-Jansen

I just tested mine without the onstart/end scripts, and while it never crashed for me with them on, everything is running fine without them. @Meneer-Jansen, I think it's probably safe if you want to remove those particulars in your guide above for posterity. While still not a perfect solution, I'm satisfied with what we now have as-is. If you guys ever experiment with streamlining the process, or learn anything new I'd always be interested to hear it.

spud11

Hi. There was some reference to lxde earlier in this thread, but I'm assuming we don't need this - that we can just install BasiliskII following items 1 to 9 of Meneer Jansen's guide in this thread from a day ago (and pray it works!)

edmaul69

@spud11 yes just use his latest guide except ignore the runcommand stuff. If the img file isnt already in 16 color b&w or 256 color, do not add the “displaycolordepth 8” to the basiliskii.cfg or set the dispmanx to “enabled” in retropie-setup.

edmaul69

@spud11 so if it isnt in 256 color, set it to 16 color b&w. Then add the other stuff in the guide above. After that boot the img thats set to b&w then change to 256 colors. You cant set it to 256 colors when it is in thousands or millions of colors. It crashes the program if you do.

spud11

@edmaul69 Okay, thanks so much for your help on this. I'll have a crack at it this evening after work and let you know. I haven't played around with BasiliskII on Linux or Retropie yet, but have on Windoze and, sadly, it hasn't been a happy experience so far.