32-bit d-day for macOS (OS X) apps (what to do about emulators)

[BadGoldEagle]

Sweet! What's your config? Mine has an i9 9980HK with 32GB of RAM and a 5500M with 8GB of VRAM. 

Asking this because Basilisk might work better with the i7 model. I'll check how many cores it uses and perhaps limit it on mine. Let me know how Basilisk works on yours!

I find that Apple did a great job with the thermals on the 16" vs the 15" model. The one I gave back because of the god awful keyboard had the exact same processor and temperatures were on the high side even while doing casual web browsing. This one's idling at about 35-36C with a few tabs open. I haven't had time to install Windows on it yet. Apparently you can't tweak the fan curve because of the new T2 chip anymore, so it might get a little toasty... We'll see. Also, the AMD drivers were really buggy at launch and you can't uninstall them entirely so I'll wait a bit. 

Edit: So I cooled the Mac down to 32C by setting the fans at full blast, and started Basilisk II. I think the CPU graph speaks for itself:



Temperature range: 75 to 100C, fans running at mid rpm after 2 minutes of use.

There's definitely an optimisation issue.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Okay, so limiting the Basilisk task to 60% with AppPolice seems to fix the overheating issue. Mouse movement is perhaps not as smooth (still definitely tolerable for an old OS) but at least the CPU isn't cooking itself to death.

 

[pcamen]

I have the same setup but with 64GB ram. 

 

[pcamen]

Here is what I am seeing under Catalina for Basilisk II.

Color is definitely off.  And it only starts about every other time.  Half the time I double click and it quickly opens then closes. 

 

[pcamen]

Oh, Ok, strange.  That happens with thousands of colors selected.  WITH 256 or millions, it looks normal.  

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Sit rep: CPU utilisation problem is under investigation. It appears to be a Catalina only problem and does not affect Mojave users. 

Will report back here once I have more news. In the meantime, if someone here is interested in following the detailed analysis, you can check out this thread on emaculation.com

As for the color issue, I'm not experiencing it on my machine... This is really weird. @pcamen Have you tried another disk image/MacOS install?



I've also tried on a 7.5 install and it's still ok. 

Edit: Also tried 030 emulation, still ok and Basilisk is not in low res mode.

 

[uyjulian]

It may be possible that 10.15 does not force vsync (while 10.14 does)

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Ok, problem solved.

Since I didn't import my old config file from my old machine, I started over and couldn't find an extensive parameter list, so I completely forgot about 'idlewait'.

IT TURNS OUT IT'S 100% NECESSARY. Now BasiliskII is only using 7% of my CPU. 

Also, someone started working on an improved Catalina-friendly version of the BasiliskGUI. As you probably know, the old one was 32 bit only and doesn't work on 10.15. 

If you want to try it out, head over here -> https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10454

And if you want to give feedback but don't have an account, I'll happily transfer your thoughts to the developer via emaculation.com. Just shoot me a PM

 

[pcamen]

I'm happy to say I've updated to Catalina (fresh install on a new Mac actually) and all is well.  I've found alternatives for pretty much everything that I had that was 32 bit.  Catalina seems stable and I've had no issues with email, which is something I heard reports about and was a little worried.   

 

[dcr]

. . . and I've had no issues with email, which is something I heard reports about and was a little worried. 

What are you using for eMail?  Thunderbird or Apple's Mail?

 

[pcamen]

Apple Mail.  Always have used it so i have a huge amount of legacy email.

 

[dcr]

Dang.  I'm curious how Thunderbird will work.

 

[jamie marchant]

Thunderbird is only 32-bit on Mac? (Don't have any modern Macs) weird, cause I am fairly sure it's 64-bit on Linux. 

 

[uyjulian]

No, it can run on 64bit

 

[pcamen]

Hmmm.  Just ran SheepShaver and it is also using 100% of a CPU like Basilisk was, on Catalina. 

 

[dcr]

I'm still a bit hesitant to upgrade to Catalina on the one machine I have that can run it.  For one, it's kind of slow under High Sierra.  And the other thing is that my version of Suitcase Fusion isn't supported on anything higher than High Sierra.  So I need to find new font management software since I don't do software subscriptions.

 

[CC_333]

I'm staying on High Sierra because, as I've said ad nauseum, the version of Pro Tools I use (2018.7) isn't supported on any macOS higher than 10.13.4 (it seems to work fine on 10.13.6, however).  Of course, it will probably work fine on Mojave, but I'd rather not push my luck (and also, I don't trust APFS; I realize I'll have to bite the bullet and adopt it eventually, but I'm gonna take my time because HFS, imperfect as it is, is working 100% fine for me).

c