Update to my good U1E, bad U1E post: > U1E #1: 200MHz, 256MB, 9.1GB, a Creator 3D card, etc. > U1E #2: 200MHz, 128MB, 9.1GB, a C6 8-bit card, etc. I have swapped the RAM from #1 to #2, and U1E still hangs during "make," same as before. Thanks to Jim Crumley for making this suggestion; along these lines I've also performed a bad block scan of the disk in each machine during the Debian install, which does not report any error.