set cpu core to dynamic or auto.

Failed to work 🙁 Gameplay is ok the sound just skips alot.

Wow! Someone else likes MAX!
M.A.X. is the whole reason I downloaded DOSBox.

I found that music and the cinematics audio was skippy when using the gravis ultrasound soundcard emulation.
The c:\max\setup.exe program automatically picks the gravis soundcard.

To fix it, I went into dosbox.conf and changed it so gus=false. This makes it so the only emulated soundcard that will be found is the soundblaster 16. After you make that change, restart DOSBox and run c:\max\setup.exe.
Run autodetect and it should pick the Sound Blaster 16 with IOport 220, IRQ 7, and DMA 5.
When I was playing, these settings worked much better than the gravis, no more skipping, but there were a lot of popping noises.

So I ran setup.exe again and chose the original Sound Blaster with IOport 220, IRQ 7, and DMA 1. Note that I left sbtype=sb16 in dosbox.conf. The left and right sound channels both sound like they are just the center channel with this setting, but I heard less popping noises with this selection. Since MAX doesn't really have much need for stereo sound, I like this selection best.

My recommendation is to try the above and pick which soundcard selection works best for you. Hope it solves your problem.

When you get it working shoot me a message sometime (I think this board allows private messages). I only know one other person who plays MAX, and we need some more opponents! The DOSBox IPX emulation worked great for us.

Help! I am trying to run MAX with IPX enabled and my system just crashes!

This problem is probably over my head, but I'll give it a shot. I have been able to run MAX with IPX.

Here is what I do:
-I have MAX installed to the virtual C:\MAX (really C:\DOS\CDrive\MAX)
-I have ipx=true in my config file
-I start DOSBox, at the prompt I type "IPXNET STARTSERVER"
-After this my buddy types "IPXNET CONNECT xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:213"
-At this time I can see my buddy is connected in the status window
-I double check the connection by typing "IPXNET PING" and I should see my buddy's ping (we normally get ~20-25ms)
-I type "CD MAX"
-Finally at the "C:\MAX" prompt I type "MAX and run the game. From there you go into host or join network game

Can you walk me through what you do if it is any different? Or if it is the same, at what point do you crash? What do you mean by your "system crashes" is your entire PC going down? or just DOSBox? Or is DOSBox still running and MAX running into one of its infinite loops?

Yeah, we got it up and running; my bad. Thanks for trying!

Maybe you can post what was wrong before, other people might
benefit from this information.

The required command line ipxnet stuff was not done, leading to the crash.