Thanks Geoff. I had also read that during the course of my earlier
research on this issue. But ...
:~$ uname -r
2.6.18-3-686
Viola! 686 and still no 1GB mem recognised, only 3/4s (776400KB) of
it, as seen below:
:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 776400 732580 43820 0 36980 317528
-/+ buffers/cache: 378072 398328
Swap: 2931852 92 2931760
It would appear that I'm looking at either just accepting this fact or
will have to recompile my kernel, which I am a tad phobic about to be
frank.