I am a new user on a macbook pro, downloaded crossover PC emulator and installed ultima VII, only the sound works and the screen stays white... any suggestions?

Changing the video settings did the trick Solved!

You don't need to use Crossover. The emulator used to play Ultima VII is DOSBox, which has a native Mac version.

My suggesion is Boxer, a DOSBox frontend. All you do is drag the data files onto an icon and it creates an .app file that will open and run the game for you.

The other option is to download the Mac version of Exult, which is an improved engine with a lot of bug fixes and tweaks. It runs natively too.

Of course, if Crossover works for you then by all means keep with it.

Hmm, it doesn't seem to support either of my versions of the Ultima trilogy or U7. It keeps balking about the games .exe files.

Here is how I play gog.com dos games under Linux:

1. Install the game using Wine/Crossover/Any other "emulator"
2. Copy data files to somewhere on your homedir/datadir
3. Install Linux/Macos native dosbox
4. Modify dosboxULTIMA7.conf so that paths will be correct (in the end, mount line)
5. run native dosbox with the configuration from step 4 (I don't know how this works on Mac)

Alternative for steps 4 & 5, you may use Dosbox game launcher. With that, configuring multiple dos games for one Dosbox version is breeze. (link: http://members.quicknet.nl/blankendaalr/dbgl/)