I doubt it's the ram, I stuck 2 x 256 meg and 1 x 512 meg in exactly the same board, all three sticks are totally different brands and the 512 meg stick is PC3200, the 2 x 256's are PC166, however, my bios post say's that dual channel is enabled

not sure if the speech post uses the onboard soundstorm, prolly not as it'll have no drivers installed, chances are it uses the cases built in speaker. With regards to the memory locations, 1 in blue, 1 in black.