Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

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

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen i will look into those files. I had extra images preserving my good image that was already in 256 color. So luckily my good one is working now.

spud11

Well, I managed to get Prince of Persia 1 to work for a short time following the guide in post 137.

I followed that guide strictly and I was very impressed by the full colour version of POP1 which seemed to work very well, albeit I couldn't figure out what the default controls are. (Are there keyboard controls?)

The reason I was using POP1 and not POP2 was because I have not been able to find the files meneer-jansen mentioned. I wasn't able to find the correct "Starterdisk.hfv" (the only one I found was for POP1) and I couldn't find "Oldgames.hfv" at all. (And no, I'm not asking for them here either.)

More interestingly, I ran into the "Black Screen of Death" as well.

As POP1 was working well, I thought I would set up my system so that I could play multiple Mac games fairly easily.

I'm using Attract Mode so I changed my Apple Macintosh.cfg file in \attractmode\emulators\ to read:

 # Generated by Attract-Mode v2.2.1
#
executable           /opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh
args                 0 _SYS_ macintosh "[romfilename]"
rompath              /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh
romext               .sh;.SH
system               Apple Macintosh
info_source          thegamesdb.net
artwork    flyer           /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/flyer
artwork    marquee         /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/marquee
artwork    snap            /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/snap
artwork    wheel           /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/wheel

I changed my emulators.cfg to:

default = "basilisk"
basilisk = "bash %ROM%"

And I added a bash script to my /roms/macintosh folder called POP.sh (and made it executable) as follows:

#!/bin/bash
sudo /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

I did this on the basis that it would allow me to set up separate bash scripts for each game (eg one for POP1 and one for POP2) just by changing disk02.img in the above script to whatever Mac game I wanted to run. (This kind of script has worked in the past for several other "fiddly" systems I've installed.)

Unfortunately, it didn't work and POP1 stopped working altogether with the dreaded black screen. I've had to switch the Pi off then on as I couldn't do anything else with it.

I've tried deleting the basiliskii.cfg and the basilisk_ii.prefs, but doing that doesn't make it work again. Next I'll probably try uninstalling and reinstalling basilisk2 from scratch and see whether I can get POP1 to work again and to figure out the controls. (By the way, I couldn't delete the basilisk_ii_xpram file because it didn't exist on my system .)

edmaul69

@spud11 you should just reinstall basilisk so it refixes the emulators.cfg. First of all pop 1 & 2 can be installed in the same os. Why need seperate scripts? Second you can just create a basilisk2 in the emulators.cfg if you need to boot a different image and create info there. The files in the roms folder can be blank inside. Just name them how you want. Then when you boot the blank file press a button to configure and select emulator + rom and choose which basilisk you want to run for that particular file. You seem to have just made things more difficult for yourself. Using 1 image file you can have as many games in it as it runs just like any other operating system with a gui.

spud11

@edmaul69 Thanks. But if I have both POP1 and POP2 in the same disk image, when I've started Basilisk, won't I then need to select which game to play? If that's the case, I'd prefer to be able to select a game in Attract Mode which then immediately starts that particular game in Basilisk.

edmaul69

@spud11 yes you can do it that way. Still i would just use blank files in the roms folder and put everything in the emulators.cfg. If you put all the info in the rom files it may bypass the emulators.cfg and you can lose the runcommand options to set video settings and emulator settings and stuff.

spud11

@edmaul69 Okay, I think I understand. Thanks.

edmaul69

@spud11 and in the blank files remove the .sh. They dont need a file extension and im pretty sure they dont need to be executable either when done this way.

Meneer Jansen

@spud11 said in Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color:
[...] I couldn't figure out what the default controls are. (Are there keyboard controls?)

PoP2 (I think it's the same for PoP1) needs to be controlled w/ the keyboard, preferably w/ the nummeric pad. Coltrol = sword, Shift = smallstep or hang on ledge. I can remember that the MS-DOS version had an option to use a joystick. Unfortunately I cannot refer to a website with allmost all information one neends on PoP because it contains copyrighted material, or at least links to that. Maybe the mods will let me say that the site is called "Prince of Persia Unofficial Site" (Google is your friend).

Unfortunately I have no experience w/ "attract mode" so I cannot help you w/ the rest. BasiliskII is very, very tricky to get to work (in 256 colors) as you've noticed. Good luck w/ getting it to work on you system and let us know if and how you succeeded!

FranceMSR

If you want to play Prince of Persia with Basilisk II you have to simply change the option displaycolordepth on basiliskii.cfg BEFORE you change the same option in the MacOS control panel. So:
nano /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg

displaycolordepth 8

Then enable dispmanx for basilisk on RetroPie Setup. At this point start the emulator and ONLY NOW you can change the color on 256 mode ;-)

Not tricky, you have to do the right things in the right order ;-)

Bye all

Reference: http://www.retropie-italia.it/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=753

spud11

@meneer-jansen Thanks for that. I'll have a go during the next couple of days sorting out the controls based on those keyboard commands you've suggested, once I've got the game up and running again. I also found the files I was missing in another pack. Thanks.

@FranceMSR Thanks for that suggestion. I had tried again today using the original order, but couldn't get the game to work, possibly/probably because of the order in which I was doing each thing. I'll try the order you have suggested and hopefully I'll succeed this time and will report back.

Meneer Jansen

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

If you want to play Prince of Persia with Basilisk II you have to simply change the option displaycolordepth on basiliskii.cfg BEFORE you change the same option in the MacOS control panel. So:
nano /opt/retropie/configs/macintosh/basiliskii.cfg

displaycolordepth 8

Then enable dispmanx for basilisk on RetroPie Setup. At this point start the emulator and ONLY NOW you can change the color on 256 mode ;-)

Not tricky, you have to do the right things in the right order ;-)

Bye all

Reference: http://www.retropie-italia.it/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=753

Just for my information: can one run BasiliskII without activating dispmanx at all? I thought one couldn't. Info appreciated. :-)

FranceMSR

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

Just for my information: can one run BasiliskII without activating dispmanx at all? I thought one couldn't. Info appreciated. :-)

Yes, but you can't change the color mode on 256 (8 bit) ;-)

Meneer Jansen

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

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

Just for my information: can one run BasiliskII without activating dispmanx at all? I thought one couldn't. Info appreciated. :-)

Yes, but you can't change the color mode on 256 (8 bit) ;-)

Thanks. Can you check/proof read my procedure in post 137? Are the steps in proper order now?

FranceMSR

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

Thanks. Can you check/proof read my procedure in post 137? Are the steps in proper order now?

The only necessary thing is that you enable dispmanx for basilisk and change the color depth in the configuration file BEFORE you change the same option on MacOS ;-)

I don't use a pre-made disk but install MacOS from scratch with empty virtual disk, so I don't use the 16 grays option step.

Check now for a screenshots of the results here:
http://www.retropie-italia.it/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=753

Here there is a guide (in italian) for installing MacOS from scratch:
http://www.retropie-italia.it/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=752

edmaul69

@meneer-jansen yes thousands of colors and millions of colors won’t run with dispmanx hence why you need to switch it to b&w before enabling dispmanx and displaycolordepth 8. You dont need runcommand-onstart and runcommand-onend. If this is added to the wiki i wouldnt have it as a tutorial just for the pop games. I have a ton of games on mine. I also set /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/ as my second drive instead of an image then i can just put my apple programs in there and then install them inside basilisk. Eliminating the need to use basiliskii on the pc every time i want to add programs.

FranceMSR

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

@meneer-jansen yes thousands of colors and millions of colors won’t run with dispmanx hence why you need to switch it to b&w before enabling dispmanx and displaycolordepth 8. You dont need runcommand-onstart and runcommand-onend. If this is added to the wiki i wouldnt have it as a tutorial just for the pop games. I have a ton of games on mine. I also set /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/macintosh/ as my second drive instead of an image then i can just put my apple programs in there and then install them inside basilisk. Eliminating the need to use basiliskii on the pc every time i want to add programs.

I repeat: The only necessary thing is that you enable dispmanx for basilisk and change the color depth in the configuration file BEFORE you change the same option on MacOS ;-)

Not funny procedure like change color to black and white or other things acting as a magician :D

edmaul69

@francemsr You cannot switch it to enable dismanx or displaycolordepth 8 if your macos is in thousands of colors or millions of colors. They do not work with dispmanx enabled. And if you try to switch to 256 colors without dispmanx enabled it crashes basilisk. If you try to boot a thousands+ colors set in macos with dispmanx enabled everything crashes. Hence why you need to either switch to b&w or have it already set to 256 colors before being changing dispmanx on the pi.

FranceMSR

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

@francemsr You cannot switch it to enable dismanx or displaycolordepth 8 if your macos is in thousands of colors or millions of colors. They do not work with dispmanx enabled. And if you try to switch to 256 colors without dispmanx enabled it crashes basilisk. If you try to boot a thousands+ colors set in macos with dispmanx enabled everything crashes. Hence why you need to either switch to b&w or have it already set to 256 colors before being changing dispmanx on the pi.

You're wrong. I installed MacOS 7.5.3 that by default is set to thousands of colors. Then I enabled dispmanx, then changed color depth to 8 in configuration file. At that point I started MacOS and change colors from thousands to 256. It works without any problem, see here for the result:
http://www.retropie-italia.it/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=753

edmaul69

@francemsr i have done this many times. Even tested it three times today with the same results as the many many times i tried before.