Reply 40 of 55, by Uka
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OK, today I have got and tested myself a REALmagic Maxima (EM 7011 - P/N 53-000417).
Most bugs that used to happen with REALmagic Ultra II / NetStream1 (EM 8010 - P/N 53-000517) are gone 😀
Moreover, I was able to run the ReelMagic games on my older PC (386SX 33 MHz, 4 MB RAM, Trident TVGA9000C 512 KB, ESS1868F) - most games are fine there as well, while with Ultra II every game used to freeze on 386 while loading the MPEG driver.
Still, that PC is a little bit too weak for Maxima as well (the official requirements list 486/25MHz and 4 MB RAM as minimal).
So, if anyone is interested, here are some more details:
1+2. 'Dragon's Lair' / 'Space Ace' - no issue, everything works fine both on 386 and Pentium-233MMX. These are the only games that worked fine with Ultra II as well (but only on Pentium-233MMX).
3. 'The Return to Zork'. The freeze bug that used to happen for me on zooming at the sign with Ultra II is luckily gone! So that's not something related to the motherboard or CD - it could be either RM card model or its drivers, although I have suspicions about the sound card (as with Maxima instead of Ultra II I have different IRQs for MPEG and sound cards).
Unfortunately, the overlay bug is still here, as it could be guessed. So, an old model with Feature connector is required... I have never seen one on eBay either.
4. 'The Psychotron' - everything is fine on Pentium-233MMX (and Windows 98), all the screens are visible now, in difference from Ultra II!
Strangely enough, it does not work for me on 386 (in Windows 3.1 of course) - I do not get any MPEG videos there at all (in CD Station, Media Player etc.), only green screens... In 'The Psychotron' I have animated stills and transitions (that used to be empty pink on Ultra II), but not FMV. Who knows what could the problem be? The game requirements state 486/25MHz and Super VGA videocard - maybe Trident TVGA9000C is not enough for Windows? I tried changing the Windows driver from Trident 256 to standard SuperVGA 256, but it did not help.
5. 'The Horde' - that seems to work fine, but it has some issue with my sound cards (they both are not original Sound Blasters it wants). The RM driver readme says there used to be a patch on Sigma BBS to fix that issue, but where to find that now?..
6. 'Entity' - this one does not work. With Ultra II I got only freezes. Now with Maxima the game runs - but it just skips the MPEG videos to the menu and then to the game itself! Very strange. It could be that this one wants only older ReelMagic, or needs some driver tweaking? It is worth to note that if I load OM1DRV before launching 'Entity', it does not lead me into the game but just returns to DOS after a few seconds.
And the source of the available disk is very dubious - it could have been buggy from the very beginning.
More testing is needed here!