It is unlikely that the ISA card will work with any of the IRQs greater than 7. The core IRQs are 0-7, so you should try disabling your COM or LPT ports and then assigning that IRQ (probably 3 or 4) to Legacy ISA.

Thanks for the tip regarding core IRQ's! It didn't help me in this instance, but this will likely prove to be valuable knowledge in the future. I tried disabling the COM and LPT ports in the BIOS and setting their IRQ's (3,4,7) to Legacy ISA. Exact same problem.

Still haven't gotten another PSU to see what that does. I've been having strange issues with a few games. Most notably SkyRoads, which freezes during the intro before the title pops up. This is the kind of thing that makes me suspect the power supply. I could 100% be wrong here, so any other ideas are still quite welcome.

I should expand, since core IRQs isn't really the right term. Basically, early IBM PCs had an Interrupt Controller with 8 channels, 0-7. Once the need for more of them arose, they tied another controller with 8 more channels to IRQ2, which added 8-15. Generally, anything related to DOS and ISA works best on the low IRQs. I recommend that you read the Wikipedia article on Interrupt Requests for more information. DMA channels work similarly, with low and high DMA options existing.

I would make sure that you're only reserving as many resources in the BIOS as you need. Is the card detected in Windows? Does it have any jumpers on it?

I gotcha. I came into computers with a 486 but didn't start getting heavy into hardware and such until Socket A boards. 😜 Anyway, I've disabled everything I'm not using and tried forcing other IRQ/DMA's to Legacy ISA. Still nothing. The card has no jumpers (I wish it *did* at this point) and this partition is pure DOS as of now, but I've been considering getting a second SD card (I'm using an SD to IDE adapter) set up for '98/DOS 7.1. I'll go ahead and do that now.

(Side note, I also ruled out the power supply and CPU as the cause of *any* of the problems I've been experiencing.)

EDIT: Under Windows '98 using the Windows installer, I can confirm it at least installs drivers at this point, which is something I couldn't get to happen in pure DOS at all. We'll see if it ends up working from here.
EDIT 2: No dice. Installing the drivers causes Windows to freeze on boot (I'm assuming when initializing the card.) Device Manager doesn't show any evidence of the card's existence.
EDIT 3: Me jumping the gun and installing the ReelMagic stuff before my sound drivers made the ReelMagic installation think my card had the sound capabilities the old model does, so it has set it up as well. I've removed the audio-related entries it added via msconfig and gotten it to boot. Now it's saying that the interrupt wasn't found. Sounds to me like the Windows driver installation just lets me install the drivers whether or not the card is there. Nothing in Device Manager looks like the ReelMagic card, either.
EDIT 4: After a bunch of uninstalling, reinstalling, installing while in DOS mode, etc. I've come to the conclusion that when I have my PCI sound card (220/5/1) initialized, the computer can't find the ReelMagic card, but when the sound card isn't enabled, it can find it.
EDIT 5: Going to test right now to confirm that it was a conflict with the PCI sound card I was using on a fresh MS-DOS 6.22 install and no sound card inserted. If the card is detected, I may end up buying a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 and swapping to it for the easiest possible solution.

I've confirmed that the sound card has nothing to do with it. A fresh install of MS-DOS 6.22 with sound drivers on or off allows the ReelMagic drivers to detect the card and install the drivers just fine. I can change the port, IRQ, and DMA for the MPEG playback in the setup utility, but no combination of settings will actually allow the card to initialize for MPEG playback, whether set the motherboard as "Resources Controlled By: Auto" or manually set them myself to match what the ReelMagic setup utility has them set as.

I managed to install Return to Zork MPEG and it technically runs with nothing from the ReelMagic side working. In other words, no FMV's play and no background graphics show.

EDIT: Got it to initialize properly! Apparently I just needed to run the *latest* drivers ever since this last fresh MS-DOS install (even though I keep seeing people recommend older drivers) to get it to work. The hardware side of this is done. Thank you. (Now I need to get Return to Zork to actually *work.* It's saying "disc read error" *grumble grumble*)

Congrats!

ReelMagic EM7011 woes continued.

I'm beginning to think the hardware side ISN'T done. I simply CANNOT get this thing to play MPEG video at all. The latter two versions of the drivers initialize the card fine upon boot, the card is recognized and games will start up. Once any game gets to where any FMV should be, it just shows black and sometimes crashes. I'm on an ISA Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 now, so the PCI sound card mess is out of the picture. I've yet to see a video come from this card. I've tried all sorts of combinations of I/O, IRQ, and DMA options, with all four drivers. I've switched CD-ROM drives (as Return to Zork kept telling me it was a disc read error) and I've tried putting the contents of the Dragon's Lair disc onto its own partition on my SD card. All produce the same effect.

Is it safe to say I have a dead card or could this still be an id10t error?

EDIT: Reinstalled MS-DOS, the Soundblaster software, and the ReelMagic drivers (v2.20.) It's back to not initializing no matter what settings I give it. To be more specific, I'm getting "DSP Initialization failure" under "MPEG Playback" but it does detect the board at any I/O address I set it to.

Did you ever get this card working? I just got an EM7000 ISA with IDE, waiting for it in the mail. If you did get it working would you mind sharing which drivers you ended up using? thanks!

uematsufreak, uscleo, did you manage to get your cards working?

I am in the club now, too 😀

Bought myself a REALmagic Ultra II/NetStream 1 card (based on EM 8010 chip), the latest ISA model. It took some time to correctly identify the card, but after doing that and using its native drivers (Sigma had different drivers for every its chip) everything is rather fine!

Or almost fine - there is no trouble for the card to initialize in Windows 98, but DOS requires booting from a floppy disk to enable all those IRQs etc. I will probably try to install Windows 3.1 on the same disk to load it in a more easy way...

Sadly, it's still not working for me. Right now, I've got it so everything appears to be in working order except that the videos show absolutely nothing. The audio plays now, but the video is blank. I honestly think that if you have one of the newer ones that uses the VGA passthrough instead of the VESA connector that we might need newer drivers than the 2.21 available online. I've switched video cards to an S3 ViRGE, bought a second ReelMagic card, and tried all available I/O settings. Same thing. 🙁

Of course, you need some new drivers - and those made especially for your model!
2.21 will only work with the original ReelMagic and ReelMagic Lite.

Do you see that the driver is loaded when you boot your PC? Does running test.bat say that fmpdriver is loaded fine?

What is your second card?
I think that EM7011 is either Maxima or Maxima Pro. I have Maxima Pro drivers for you to try.

As for me, my Ultra II/NetStream 1 works fine, but in DOS I do not have any sound due some IRQ conflict with my sound card... Will have to think about something.

The drivers load up well and test.bat runs fine. I can load up MPEGs in it just fine as well, only the video doesn't show. Instead, the window is solid pink, and yeah. This card is the same as the first one.

EDIT: Totally forgot to mention I tried those drivers and it quit out almost immediately saying they don't match my card.

And what is the name of the model you have? You can see it either during the start up while the PC is loading, or in the Device list of Windows 95/98 (if you are using them).

The pink window usually means that the MPEG has not been duly calibrated (i.e. the video goes somewhere off-screen). Have you run the calibration utilities?

Couldn't see anything displaying the model number on boot, so I switched to my 98 SE drive and it appears to not show up in Device Manager at all. (I haven't tried installing ReelMagic drivers there. Only on my 6.22/3.1 drive.) On eBay it was listed as "Sigma Designs 53-000417 RealMagic 16-Bit ISA MPEG Decoder Card - 8-Pin Port".

And yeah, I have tried using the calibration, but it tells me to line up the black box inside the pink area, and there is no black box no matter how I move the sliders around. It's always just pink.

EDIT: Found some Maxima drivers and am currently trying those out.

The card won't probably show in Device Manager until you install the drivers, but at least Windows should tell you that a new device of such and such name is found and requires installation? At least, that what it tells me.

And during the boot process, after BIOS lists IDE devices, it also tells the names of plug-and-play ISA boards found.

It is strange that there is no black box in calibration - maybe it is moved too far out?
Let's hope that Maxima drivers would work for you.

Finally got this thing to work! After a ton of digging, I found these drivers, and now it functions as it should. 😁

Congratulations!
So EM7011 is Maxima (not Pro) after all.

What games are you able to run? I have some issues with 'The Psychotron' in Windows 3.1 and Windows 98 - it would be nice to hear from other people who can try it...

Return to Zork runs in DOS (but freezes with disc read errors both on a burned disc and on the original.) I didn't play enough Dragon's Lair to test it for sure, but it at least runs. I'll try The Horde and The Psychotron within the next few days, as well, and report back.

uematsufreak, have you tried it?

Well, I can tell what I have the problems with.
I am using REALmagic Ultra II (Netstream 1) on Pentium-233MMX PC. Sadly I could not get anything to run on my older 386SX PC. The card installs fine there, but all the games (and the tests) freeze either when initializing the driver or a few minutes after that. Probably the processor is too weak for them...

So, out of the four games I have:

1. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace run fine. Still, they are not the best ReelMagic games (as there are better later versions - DVDi, HD, remakes etc.).

2. 'Return to Zork' works, but - the overlay is somewhat bugged!
Separate ReelMagic / interface pictures are OK, but when they are being shown together, then some textures are being lost!

Here are the pictures of the interface alone taken as DOS screenshots:

As you can see, everything is clear and complete there.
However, on the actual screen some textures are missing. Here are the pictures of the screen taken with the camera:

As you can see, both the menu and the vines look fragmented!
Can someone please tell if they have similar issues with ReelMagic?
It could be some driver glitches (although I have tried many options there), or it could be the problem of a game designed for the original ReelMagic card running on a later REALmagic Ultra II...

3. 'The Psychotron'. There is a similar and a very bad glitch with the overlay. Many screens are shown as correct, but - when entering the office on the first level and taking a closer look at a hidden safe or a tape recorder, the overlay screen is missing!

The first screen is of the regular (non-ReelMagic) version of the game, and it shows a background, while the ReelMagic version does not show it. And it is VERY difficult to press the invisible buttons on the screen to open that safe...
Similar things usually happen when some colors or borders are not adjusted - but everything is adjusted there, and other overlay screens are shown fine.

Again, could please someone check it with their ReelMagic cards?