I am new to programming on the TI 84 CE, eZ80, and I am trying to figure out how the vRam interprets 8bpp colors. I read on the wiki that it uses the 8-bit number to be an index to the regular, 16bpp color palette. How does it point to the correct color if the 16bpp color palette is a memory location and it is an 8-bit number??

I read elsewhere that you need to convert to convert the 8bpp to 1:5:5:5, but that still doesn't make much sense to me.

I have been trying to figure this out for a few days.
Maybe I am going at this 8bpp thing all wrong, all I know is I want to use 8bpp.

Any help would be appreciated!

8bpp means that it indeed uses 8 bits per pixel, and all these bytes points to a (fixed) palette, so it indeed an index. The palette is located at $E32000, and consists of 256 entries, each of 2 bytes (hence the 1:5:5:5 mode). So basically a byte X in vRAM means "get the color at index X and display that". See more here, and specifically at "LCDPalette". Hope this helps!

Thanks!! That worked.