How I fixed the infamous Basilisk II Windows "Black Screen" bug in 2013

I’ve been noticing a lot of fun stories lately about bugs in old software that suddenly showed up in newer Windows versions. For example, here’s an excellent writeup by Silent about a bug in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that laid dormant until Windows 11 24H2 came out. MattKC also recently posted a cool video about the massive project of decompiling LEGO Island, which also solved the mystery of the “exit glitch” that happened in newer versions of Windows. Nathan Baggs has also been at it again, fixing a modern compatibility issue with Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri this time. I won’t spoil these stories for you, but they all reminded me of a bug that I fixed twelve years ago in Basilisk II but never wrote about until now. Basilisk II is one of the more popular 68k Mac emulators, allowing you to run an old Mac system on your modern machine. Nowadays, you can even run it in your browser using Infinite Mac! Here’s a screenshot of Basilisk II running on my Windows 10 machine. The bug was: w ... Read full article.