Rhapsody is my nemesis

Don't ask me why, but I have had a fascination with Apple's Rhapsody operating system for THE longest time. I did have a few VMs a while back that had Rhapsody DR1 for Intel, Rhapsody DR2 for Intel, OpenStep and NeXTSTEP but I'd never tried it on physical hardware. When I got the Elonex server from my Dad's storage a couple of years back, I did try and install a custom Rhapsody DR2 image to a compact flash card that Action Retro had created. but none of the graphics cards I had worked with it in anything other than 640x480 in 256 colours. 

Well recently I got "The urge" again - that and the Elonex server was now in pieces and more easily able to mess with it's config. I downloaded the Rhapsody ISO from machintoshgarden.org and burned it to CD, then wrote the floppy disk images to some spare floppies. Along with the CD was a PDF with a list of compatible hardware so as with anything retro, off to eBay I went, in search for a compatible graphic card. The ATI RageII Turbo (Rage Pro Turbo II? I can't remember the name) worked in 256 colours but any higher resolutions or colour depths would cause the machine to boot into VGA safe mode, which ain't pretty. I found a seller selling an ATI Mach64 graphic card, so bought it and tested it when it arrived. Sadly, like the RageII or whatever it is that I had didn't work in any higher resolutions so back to the hunt. 

In my previous post about the accidental purchasing of a new CPU and motherboard is relevant here, because the graphic card that came with it is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446-HC-A. Now, the HCL I'd been reading before mentioned some Cirrus Logic graphics cards, but not this one specifically so I didn't hold up much hope but installed it anyway. When Rhapsody booted, I opened up the Configure app, deleted the existing ATI driver and added a new one. I pressed the button to scan for hardware and if found and loaded the Cirrus Logic driver. Upon reboot I had colour, but this time the login screen, which I hadn't had before. Could this be a supported card???!


 After I logged in, I opened Configure again, changed the colour depth from 256 colours to 16 bit and rebooted. I held my breath as it booted and got to the coloured log in screen. I entered my username, password and clicked the login button. A few seconds later I was at the desktop IN 16 bit colour! Once again I opened Configure and changed the resolution to 800x600 in 16 bit colour and rebooted once more. I logged in again and this and I did indeed have 800x600 in 16 bit colour. So hunt for a graphics card for Rhapsody is over! Next is audio but that's a story for another day. 

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