I think that your talking about banks in your first question. This method of would take two ram sticks to make a bank. This is mostly used with SIMMs. This ram technology is VERY much outdated.
As for your second question, you would simply have to buy three 1GB ram sticks when they make it in the near future if your talking about any kind of ram besides SDRAM.
If you're running a 266 MHz Cyrix, you're probably better off spending the money on a cheap mobo/cpu combo rather than upgrading RAM.
Not being sure about your machine, I'd GUESS that your machine can only accomodate 512 MB MAX of PC66 SDRAM, maximum size of 128 or 256 MB each, but I could be wrong. DDR WILL NOT WORK ON A 266 MHz CYRIX. NO WAY!
FYI: For people that have machines that support 1 GB DIMMs of PC2700 DDR, they can be found here:
Considering that one must be running a file server of significant proportions to require 3Gb of memory I would also point out the financial aspects of 512Mb vs 1Gb modules. At this time it would be very difficult to buy 1Gb PC2700 DDR and the price would be very high. As an example: Kingston advertise 512Mb 266MHz DDR PC2100 @ US$ $136, now compare the value for money against their price for a 1Gb 266MHz DDR PC2100 @ US$1,534.
It takes a real apetite for silicon to spend so much at this time. For the 'power' home user 1.5Gb on 3 x 512Mb modules would even be overkill at this time.
Just because your board supports that much RAM, doesn't mean you should run that much. How much RAM you can/should run depends on what operating system you have. If you're gonna stick with Win98, it's best not to exceed 512mb...unless you plan on modifying your vcache settings.
