Hi mate,
I saw your post about your problems, but no responses. I think part of the reasons for that is that it's really hard to understand what you wrote (the cognitive part), but also hard to just plain read it (the visual part). I see you're from New Zeland, so I assume English is your mother tongue? Even if it is, or even if it's not, you need to practice my friend...
If you're interested in some suggestions on improving your communication skills, then read along, otherwise skip to the bottom, as I'll help you with some of your problems/questions.
Don't use "double spacing". It makes things hard to read, and too long.
Use periods (.) and commas (,) to make it more legible, to give pause where needed, and to delineate sentences. Almost every language has them for a reason
User paragraphs to separate topics. Very important. Anybody looking at huge blog of text gets unconsciously scared and mentally runs away from it.
Use a spell-checker if you have trouble with orthography. (a quick way to do this is to use Gmail, and write your text in there, and let it do spell-checking, and then copy+paste into the forum)
Lastly: reread what you wrote. And read it slowly. It will help you catch many of your mistakes. This will make it easier for someone else to read, and thus understand, and thus give answers to your questions. And if you really want to excel in communication, constantly think "will the reader understand what I'm trying to say in this sentence? how can I make it more clear?"
Now, back to your technical problems (notice the double-paragraph above for separating the different subjects).
1)
The hour-glass pointer can usually be attributed to software not finding what it's looking for and/or getting hung. For example, I had an Amiga which had an ethernet card, and when said card was removed, the software was going crazy looking for it, and was not timing out, thus getting stuck at the hour-glass. In other words, I don't think it's your lack of RAM (only 1MB).
2)
As for WB2.1 running under Kickstart 3.1, yes it will.
3)
I initially didn't understand your question about Amiga 500 cards (ex. A590) and what you want to do with them with an A2091. That was pretty badly written. Though, after reading it 10 times and noticing the reference to chips, I realized you're talking about the RAM chips. Swapping them from one card to the other. I don't recall off the top of my head, but I recommend you search in amiga.resource.cx and amiga-hardware.com to glean more information for these two cards. If the chips have the SAME designations, like *4256* (where "*" = "whatever", similar to AmigaDOS "#?"), then you can safely swap or move over the chips. If you want to be double certain, look up on Google the chip specs and verify that they are indeed the same. One major factor is the speed of the chips, which is usually designated as "-60" or "-80" or "-6" or "-8" towards the end part of the chip. Those numbers indicate the speed in nanoseconds, so for example "-10" means 100ns, while "-8" means 80ns. You must either match the speed or make sure the "new" chips that you plug into your A2091 are FASTER (lower number) than the ones already there.
Here's a most excellent resource for this kind of stuff:
http://www.amiga-stuff.com/hardware/4)
As for the battery, you are right, you don't need it to have the machine function (unlike the A3000). It's only used for keeping time. It's highly recommended that you clean it up very soon, and very thoroughly. Search Amiga.org and Google for many such topics, with many details on how to do it. For the impatient: after talking with chemists, I've come to realize that the best way is to use warm water and a drop of dish washing detergent (non-polar, and 1 drop per cup of water), and scrub the area thoroughly (with Q-tips or a non-abrasive toothbrush). If the "white stuff" from the battery has spread elsewhere, then you might need to do the whole board. Then dry it thoroughly by shaking it well, and then using a fan to blow-dry it (if you're in a hurry), or hang it someplace to dry for 2-3 days. I would obviously unplug all boards from it and also visually inspect those for "white stuff" residue. I would also remove the custom chips to check those and maybe clean them separately.
Hope these tips can help. It's great that you got a Christmas card along with your purchase and thank you for your warm wishes, so this is my Christmas card to a stranger
(I'm feeling in a Christmas mood!) Hope all of it helps you out!
Cheers
PS. Glad you fixed the booting problem - just saw your post. Also this type of RAM is known as ZIP RAM. There are two general types of these, Static ZIP RAM (SRAM) and non-static, or Fast Page Mode ZIP RAM (FPM), the latter being the most common.
