Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

mediamogul

I'm going out for the night, but I do have something to add to this before I leave. I've noticed that one in several instances of launching Basilisk II with an 8-bit color depth leads to a black screen on my setup as well. Once I noticed it, I continued to cycle through launches, trying to estimate how often this happened. While admittedly not scientific, I'd say that I get a black screen about one out of ten or so launches. Could this be the outside script not launching in time on a few occasions? I'm certainly not qualified to say, but I thought it was worth noting.

edmaul69

@mediamogul so a couple questions, is dispmanx supposed to be on or off? What are your runcommand options on boot? Are you using a buffer size or a specific display size?

mediamogul

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

is dispmanx supposed to be on or off?

I have mine turned on.

What are your runcommand options on boot? Are you using a buffer size or a specific display size?

Nothing was changed for any of these. Basically, after I got a working disk image on my desktop computer last May, I transferred it and the ROM, as well as the configuration file over to the Pi. It remained that way until I tried changing the color depth a few days ago.

edmaul69

@mediamogul if i turn it on i cant boot in 16+ bit. I will switch to b&w and turn it on then try to switch to 256 color

edmaul69

@mediamogul ok so i got it to work. To go back to 32bit do i need to turn dispmanx off again?

edmaul69

@mediamogul how do i get out of full screen? Im in doom and i chose to use my mouse. And now i dont know how to get the menu bar back

mediamogul

@edmaul69

I don't remember the OS UI being directly available in any of the Doom ports, but I may be wrong. In Basilisk, alt=cmd and the windows key is option, so outside of pulling up the Doom menu itself, you might be limited to only alt+q to quit out of the game.

edmaul69

@mediamogul good to know. The menu bar gives you sound options and choice to use mouse, etc.. So i cant seem to get 32 bit to work with dispmanx on so booting into os8 after having runcommand-onend say 32, if i try to go in the next time automatic black screen and i have to reboot. So i changed runcommand-onend to 8 bit and i am running great in 256 color mode. I still have the occasional crash as you mentioned but im up and running in 256. I am going to have to play around some more to see if i can get 32 bit to work on dispmanx on.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

im up and running in 256.

Nice!

I am going to have to play around some more to see if i can get 32 bit to work on dispmanx on.

The main obstacle seems to be switching back and forth from within the emulated MacOS. I'm considering setting up a separate 1GB OS8 image already set to thousands of colors for games that need it. However, I might not bother, as most of the games I'm interested in playing only run in 256 colors anyway.

edmaul69

@mediamogul can you provide a small list of hi res games. Everything i have is capable of 256 colors. So for now staying in 256 is ok with me. Just curious of what games required it.

mediamogul

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

can you provide a small list of hi res games.

To be honest, I can't really think of any myself. However, it's a safe bet that more and more games released past the mid 90s started to require or at least could make use of the higher color range.

edmaul69

@mediamogul yeah i have a couple that work on it. Erics ultimate solitaire actually makes use of it with the wallpapers. They are scaled down when in 8bit mode

edmaul69

Well this emulator and erics ultimate solitaire has just proven i am one pathetic loser thats got no game!! :(

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Wow, that actually sparks a memory. I used to play this particular version of solitaire quite a bit back in the day. If I'm not mistaken, I got my copy off of a MacAddict Disc.

edmaul69

@mediamogul its a hard to win solitaire thats for sure. In this game i obviously didnt get to move any cards and since the cards flip three at a time, the top card from the last flip was that ace so because it was tge last card i dont get a change in the card that comes to the top and since it auto moves aces i didnt even get the pleasure of the only play in the game. I want those 10 seconds of my life back. :) I want to thank you for your help. It is awesome to have this emulator working good. And thank you @buzz for your help.

mediamogul

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

I want to thank you for your help.

Not a problem. I've been wanting to play some of the older Mac titles for quite a while. This should be fun.

edmaul69

@mediamogul @buzz so i found an issue with 256 color mode. If i have my apple superdrive plugged in and boot into baselisk with 256 colors i get an error 10 in os 8.1. If i open up the emulators.cfg and add --cdrom plus link to my install iso file it disables the cdrom and loads. However the iso file wont show up either. Both work in b&w, 16bit and 32bit just fine.

edmaul69

@edmaul69 well it works on 8.0. I am going to reinstall from scratch and see what happens with 8.1.

edmaul69

@edmaul69 i got it working. Had to uninstall and reinstall basilisk and use a new image.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Sweet deal. You still on 8.1 or did you move down to 8.0?