Will the terminal prog tell me what's causing it or do you think it's the RAM stick?
You don't need the terminal prog any more. The only reason it was needed was in case no memory could be allocated to init the gfx card to show the openfirmware screen in the first place. The nullmodem isn't useless however, especially if you want to network your machines (or debug).
So your RAM seems to work, luckily enough. Question is, is it
all detected or just half of it? You won't know until you boot MOS (or look at the serial debug).
error: error while trying to load or boot
Could it be my aging CDROM?
Very possibly. I hear people had problems with the Peg not recognising old drives - not older drives,
old drives - ie. 1998 and before.
You're making progress. Bet you're glad you didn't send the Peg back now, eh? ;-)
And the problem was probably a loose CPU card. I thought my board was broken too, for a while. You have to make sure that thing is really in there.