Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

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.

Meneer Jansen

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

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

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"

Meneer Jansen

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

streamlining the process, or learn anything new I'd always be interest

Did that, see: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1049/macintosh-basilisk-ii-8-bit-color/137 (i.e. post No. 137 in this here topic). :-)

Meneer Jansen

@spud11 said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:

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!)

You're right: I do not need LXDE anymore. The procedure from a day ago that you referred too is in post 137 here.

Meneer Jansen

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

@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.

What exactly do you mean? Must one set BII to "16 gray shades, B&W" before activating dispmanx and setting the "displaycolordepth 8" option in /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg? So do you mean that the correct procedure must be:

Start BasiliskII and set the color mode to 16 gray shades by clicking on the Apple logo at the upper left hand side and choosing:
Control panels --> Monitors --> tick "Gays" and "16".
Activate dispmanx for BII and set displaycolordepth 8 in BII's config file.

Does BII crash if you don't do it this way?

P.S. Proof reading of the procedure in post 137 is needed.

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen yes if it isn't already in 256 color, it crashes if you dont change it to 16 color gray/b&w before adding the dispmanx and displaycolordepth 8 and try to change it to 256 color first. In fact it can even trash the image so that it’s unusable. Just from my issues i had with dispmanx, 2 images i had in b&w and kept trying to change to 256 colors are now unusable with or without dispmanx. I might be able to stick them on pc and fix them but i havent tried that yet. So your guide looks correct, i was just making sure he was well aware of needing to do that first.

Meneer Jansen

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

@meneer-jansen yes if it isn't already in 256 color, it crashes if you dont change it to 16 color gray/b&w before adding the dispmanx and displaycolordepth 8 and try to change it to 256 color first. In fact it can even trash the image so that it’s unusable. Just from my issues i had with dispmanx, 2 images i had in b&w and kept trying to change to 256 colors are now unusable with or without dispmanx. I might be able to stick them on pc and fix them but i havent tried that yet. So your guide looks correct, i was just making sure he was well aware of needing to do that first.

That's unfortunate. Maybe (in the future) you can try the following. I've noticed that BasiliskII creates hidden files in the home directory. Maybe they contain settings that mess your image up. Maybe deleting them helps. They are:

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