Optiplex Gn+ RAM issues?

I went out to help a new client who has a bunch of old Dells he is trying to get running for his small business.

He has 11 systems of which 2 were in Optiplex G1 cases, but were in fact Optiplex Gn+ systems as far as I could tell.

All in all there are 9 Optiplex Gn+ rigs, none of which have RAM in them. I tried a bunch of different DIMMs but all of them gave me a 1-3-2 beep code, which translates to bad or missing RAM according to Dell. I tested every system with 4 different SDRAMs with the same beep code.

The Gn+ are all Pentium 200MHz systems, with the Intel 430 TX chipset.

I found replacement DIMMs for the Gn+ at Kingston for $93 per 128MB module.

The client wants to run Windows 2000 on each of these systems, for day-to-day office stuff like Office and Outlook.

While the minimum requirements for Windows 2000 are a Pentium with 128MB RAM, this is obviously the bare minimum and these systems are going to creep if we can even get them running.

On top of that, I did a little research and found a significant issue with the 430 TX chipset. The Intel 430 TX chipset limits cacheable RAM to 64MB; which means the 128MB chips MIGHT work, but any RAM access over 64MB will be veery slow and possibly unstable/unusable.

I have passed all of this information along to the client and strongly recommended that they cut their losses and just buy some new systems, I quoted them a system that's atleast 50 times faster for $180/ea.

BUT, they still say they want to go ahead and get these Gn+ running. Even though they plan on upgrading in about 6 months (:rooleyes:)...

My question is this. If we actually go ahead and order all this RAM, I want to be 100% sure that it will work. While according to Kingston this is the appropriate RAM for the Gn+, is there anythign else that could cause the 1-3-2 beep code? It would be a huge PITA to get these modules and find out it's something else. I believe these systems require 2-cycle RAM which would explain why all the chips I tried did not work.

Also, would you even do this job for them? I feel like if I do this and they don't work, or work terribly, that I'm somehow responsible for it. I have explained repeatedly that they may not even work, and if they do they will be insanely slow, but they seem to think they "know better" even though they are paying me to help thgem understand!!

Anyway, any tips, insight, etc. would be helpful :)