Trying to use Basilisk II, adjusting settings, and updating the Mac OS
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Hello everyone. I'm attempting to add Macintosh to my set of emulators on RetroPie. I am using a Raspberry Pi 4B+ with the following specs:
Linux retropie 5.10.52-v7l+ #1441 SMP Tue Aug 3 18:11:56 BST 2021 armv7l.
I already found a disk.img with OS 7.5.5 installed. It also included a few games and Stuffit Expander along with DropStuff. I also added Mac OS 8.1.iso to my macintosh folder inside the roms folder. I would like to launch the iso of the updated OS so I can install it into a blank HFS .img file (3 gb) that I have also included in the macintosh folder (which I labeled as system.img). I had tried to double click the Mac OS 8.1.iso, but it seems like Basilisk II could not read it. Are there any other applications I should look for on the Internet to open .iso images? Can anyone suggest any programs I should get to make it possible to open each game within Basilisk II? Please let me know.
Thanks for your suggestions. :-)
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I've made some changes to basiliskii.cfg. Here's what I added:
displaycolordepth 0
extfs /
disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/disk.img
disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/system.img
disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/MacOS81.iso
seriala /dev/ttyS0
serialb /dev/ttyS1
udptunnel false
udpport 6066
bootdrive 0
bootdriver 0
ramsize 67108864
frameskip 6
modelid 14
cpu 3
fpu false
nocdrom false
nosound false
noclipconversion false
nogui false
jit false
jitfpu false
jitdebug false
jitcachesize 0
jitlazyflush false
jitinline false
keyboardtype 5
keycodes false
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
dsp /dev/dsp
mixer /dev/mixer
ignoresegv false
idlewait trueI added the two .img files and one .iso file in the three lines that begin with "disk." I also increased the ramsize to 64 MB. The modelid line was changed to 14 to allow the .iso image to be read (as it was stated here at the bottom of the page):
https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8301
I'm not having much luck, however. Yes, I can load System 7.5.5, but I'm trying to increase compatibility to add more games. I have the disk.img and mac.rom in the correct directory. I even tried this on a PC (which was easier, since it included a GUI that allowed you to click an add button under a volumes tab to place each of those items in the correct order). If anyone knows what should be done to make the update work, please let me know.
Thanks. :-)
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@Striderx99 said in Trying to use Basilisk II, adjusting settings, and updating the Mac OS:
disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/MacOS81.iso
Isn't this supposed to be ?
cdrom /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/MacOS81.iso -
@mitu I went ahead and replaced the "disk" entry with "cdrom" on the fifth line above. I still don't see the MacOS81.iso on the desktop. The same applies to system.img. I'm guessing that might be a problem because system.img is exactly where I want OS 8.1 to be installed. MacOS81.iso is currently is in the Unix drive, but when you double click it, you get a message that says "The document 'MacOS81.iso' could not be opened, because the application program that created it could not be found. Could not find a translation extension with appropriate translators." I'm thinking that maybe I need to go to emulators.cfg to add a line with cdrom and perhaps the MacOS81.iso. You would know more than I do, so maybe I'm missing something else. I guess my next step is to go to /dev/shm to check the runcommand.log to see if there are any error messages.
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I went a step further and tried adding mount cdrom /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/MacOS81.iso and mount disk /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/system.img. The .iso and .img files still didn't show up. The runcommand.log says Parameters:
Executing: /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 --screen win/1280/720.Following what I've done with the PC and Mac versions of Basilisk II, I might try using "add cdrom" and "add disk" in front of those arguments to see if that works instead. If anyone else has had better luck, please tell me what commands you used for basiliskii.cfg and emulators.cfg.
Thank you.
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@mitu None of those additional commands really worked, so I just went back to the basiliskii.cfg file to add cdrom in front of /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/MacOS81.iso and disk in front of /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/disk.img. Now the MacOS81.iso appeared, along with system.img on the dekstop. After double-clicking on the update CD, I was able to double click on the Add OS 8.1 icon and selected System as the hard drive to install it. I left the default apps checked off. A prompt appeared that stated that more memory was required, so I double clicked on the Memory icon (I think I found it within the Apple Menu Items folder) so I could attempt to adjust the virtual memory (increased by 25%) and the amount of ram that would be used. I was asked to reboot the system to apply the changes, so I hit the control and esc keys on my keyboard. From that point, every time I attempt to launch Basilisk II from the RetroPie menu, I only see a white screen with an unhappy Mac icon in the middle.
I probably should have changed the modelid back to 5 and increased the memory value to 256 mb, but I'm not sure about that. I did attempt to replace disk.img with a backup and restarted EmulationStation, but the white screen still appears. I attempted to create another image using an official RetroPie build (with Buster OS 4.8), making sure to download Basilisk II and MinivMac and adding the appropriate files to the BIOS, macintosh roms, and macintosh config folders. Basilisk II loaded without any problems into the desktop with the MacOS81.iso and the System.img icons appearing. This time, however, the update software did inform me that I needed to read the documentation for system requirements (I'm assuming because I didn't change the default value for the memory in the basiliskii.cfg file yet).
Is there any way I can fix the white screen error I'm getting now? I'm leaving the new build image as is until someone can offer suggestions on what steps to follow next. If I need to change any of those values I mentioned, please let me know.
Thank you.
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@Striderx99 said
[..]
Is there any way I can fix the white screen error I'm getting now? I'm leaving the new build image as is until someone can offer suggestions on what steps to follow next. If I need to change any of those values I mentioned, please let me know.I have no practical experience with BasiliskII, sorry, I can't be of much help here.
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@mitu That's alright. You have offered some great solutions that have helped in the past before. I've reached out to some users at Emaculation.com that might know what to do to iron this out. Thanks for some of the pointers that helped me get past some of the hurdles in Basilisk II.
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@mitu I Googled my topic here and found the solution. Somewhere in the Emaculation site, a user brought up that they were having issues with the PC version of Basilisk II (white screen and the unhappy Mac icon appearing). They deleted the .basilisk_ii_prefs and .basilisk_ii_xpram files. These two are actually hidden. So I decided to rename those files that are located in /home/pi by attaching -orig to the end of each file, just in case I needed to save them. After restarting the Pi, I went to the Macintosh section to load one of the .iso game files. I kept my fingers crossed while loading the desktop. It actually worked! I took a look at /home/pi and noticed that another .basilisk_ii_xpram was created.
I also changed the ramsize to 268435456 (256 mb) to prevent the popup message asking you to change the amount of memory that will be used. I'm going to change the modelid to 14 once the OS is updated. I'll keep my fingers crossed as I test the 8.1 OS update again.
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I should add a little bit of a correction here. Make sure you change the modelid to 14 before you apply the 8.1 update. Otherwise you'll get the notification that says "This update is not compatible with your computer." As long as you have the empty .img file to load the OS files, you can take that route and watch as it prepares the necessary files and folders. After this is done, make sure you go to Special>Shutdown. You can now delete the older disk.img. Before launching the Macintosh desktop, rename whatever you called that empty .img (now containing the Mac OS 8.1) to disk.img.
Every time you add a new game, you might want to open basiliskii.cfg and add to each line: cdrom /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/nameofgame.iso (or nameofgame.img). This way, the .iso or .img will show up as a disc on the desktop. You just need to double click on each disc, find the executable, and double click it. That should go through the install process, but sometimes you might have to drag and drop a/several folder(s) into a single game folder where your other games might be stored.
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