Macintosh (Basilisk II) 8-bit Color

mediamogul

Last night, I was fortunate enough to stumble onto somewhat of a solution to this problem. Using the runcommand-onstart, we can now set the framebuffer to 8-bit color on launch by adding:

if [ "$2" = "basilisk" ]; then
fbset -depth 8
fi

With this enabled, games running in 8-bit color will now be visible. From here, I want to reset the default color depth on exit in the runcommand-onend script. Am I correct in assuming that the default color depth is ~~16-bit~~ 32-bit?

if [ "$2" = "basilisk" ]; then
fbset -depth 32
fi

BuZz

@mediamogul it's 32 bit now.

I could probably add some framebuffer depth setting to runcommand. Ill look into it.

mediamogul

@BuZz

Oh wow, that would be fantastic. Thanks.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul I haven't looked into it too extensively but there are some colour type Macs for the minivmac emulator though currently the macplus is the only binary it compiles

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

Very keen! My childhood best friend had a Macintosh Plus. I think that was the first time I ever played 'Deja Vu'. Has SheepShaver ever been considered for Retropie? If I remember right, it's capable of emulating a PowerPC up to System 9.0.4.

mediamogul

Just tested 'Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame' and it runs like a champ with the framebuffer set to 8-bit color depth. A runcommand setting would indeed be most helpful for games that require a higher color depth, as the screen now turns black when the emulated Mac is set to "Thousands of Colors". It's been a long time coming, but it was well worth the wait to play this great game again. I'm marking this as solved. Thanks again @Meneer-Jansen and @BuZz for your help with this.

BuZz

@mediamogul I made a ticket for myself on the issue tracker. Nice find btw. Strangely I did try switching framebuffer depth before and it didn't work. I obviously did something wrong or a firmware change has affected something. Nice one!

edmaul69

Got this all working today with a "1gb hard drive". Now i notice on the pi the mouse skips. Which makes using paint impossible. Closing stuff gets to be a pain too. Is it possible to have the mouse working a little better? On windows obviously it is flawless. Im going to install doom for fun just to see how bad it runs.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

The mouse doesn't skip on mine for whatever reason. I've even tried it with a few mouse-based games and it's pretty smooth.

edmaul69

@mediamogul strange. I have it with a premade 30mb drive and the 1gb one i made. The skip is so big that the blue squares on the background are slightly smaller than the space between each mouse jump. I watched a youtube video where the guy had the same issue.

edmaul69

@mediamogul also this is on os 7.5.5 with several performa roms and a quadra 650 rom. On a pi 3 i might try a fresh install as i used the files from a premade image.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Mine is MacOS 8.1 with a Performa ROM. My basiliskii.cfg contents may help:

extfs /
seriala /dev/ttyS0
serialb /dev/ttyS1
udptunnel false
udpport 6066
bootdrive 0
bootdriver -62
ramsize 67108864
frameskip 2
modelid 14
cpu 4
fpu true
nocdrom false
nosound false
noclipconversion false
nogui false
jit true
jitfpu false
jitdebug false
jitcachesize 8192
jitlazyflush true
jitinline true
keyboardtype 5
keycodes false
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
dsp /dev/dsp
mixer /dev/mixer
ignoresegv true
idlewait true

edmaul69

@mediamogul well i found out the issue. for some reason it does not like my apple iie mouse. hopefully i can figure the issue out. i even play all my doom mods with this single button mouse. i ended up making my cfg like yours except that i have my ram up to 138412032. thanks for the help.

edmaul69

I just tested and it actually skips in everything. Just never noticed before. This suxx...

mediamogul

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

i even play all my doom mods with this single button mouse.

Hah! Too kool.

I just tested and it actually skips in everything. Just never noticed before. This suxx...

Maybe it's just getting gummed up. It is one of the old ball-type mice right? Is it easy to take apart to clean?

edmaul69

@mediamogul i am having trouble trying to install os 8 on basilisk ii on windows. I have an os 8.0 iso as my cd rom drive, 7.5.5 recognizes the files. But using the 7.5.5 image or a fresh image i cant get it to work. Are you able to tell me which rom you are using? Ie: quadra 900 (might have a much longer name) and cpu type. And are you choosing to boot from cd when it is launched? I get a black screen if i dont and i get the checkerboard screen if i do but windows immedietly has an error and crashes.

Edit: with a blank hard drive and the os 8.iso as my cdrom drive choosing to boot from cd rom if i use the quadra 650 rom i get told about the startup disk wont work on this mac. But it brings up the b&w screen but then immedietly crashes if i try the quadra 900 rom. Im not sure how to get the basilisk on the pi to force boot the cd to see if i can install it on there. You said you used a performa rom. Curious about that.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

I setup my installation last May, so my memory on the details is more than a little hazy. However, looking over my backup files, I appear to have actually used a Quadra 900 Rom and a MacOS 8.1 install ISO.

edmaul69

@mediamogul ok. I will try to find the 8.1 install instead of the 8.0.

edmaul69

@mediamogul so right now with quadra 650 and 7.5.5 hard drive on the pi it is letting me install os 8 so i will see how this goes....

edmaul69

@mediamogul Do you know if doom is an 8 bit or 16 bit game? I will definitely try this workaround you posted here. I might have some questions on how you did it, but i have to wait until 8.1 finishes installing.

Well i found my issue on windows, i was using basilisk v1 and switched to v2 and it worked!