Looks like someone here plays a lot of games.
Are you using pc100 ram
scavdog? Is the 256 megs one stick of ram or two?
If its one stick of ram experiment by putting it in different memory slots and see what the result is.
If you have 2 sticks of ram:
Take out one of the sticks of ram. Now experiment with the remaining stick of ram in different memory slots. Then take out that stick of ram and put in the first stick of ram you took out. Experiment by putting it in different memory slots and see what the results are.
Sometimes motherboads don't like certain sticks of ram. Sometimes motherboards like having certain memory slots filled or not filled. Some motherboards are more instable having all memory slots filled.
I used to have a via chipset motherboard (MSI-6309) that hated a micron pc133 stick of ram I had. We're talking numerous bsod's here. The motherboard especially hated having that stick of ram in the first dimm slot. The system wouldn't even turn on most of the time. Yet using apacer memory in any of the dimm slots was no problem at all.