Bumping because I have narrowed the issue down further. I tried emptying AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to no avail. Finally, I tried disabling the cache in BIOS. When I do this, the game works, albeit slowly. This further allowed some other games to run that had similar freezing issues (Lost Vikings, Tempest 2000). Because I've run both ROTT and Tempest 2000 on a much faster Pentium II before, I doubt that it's simply a speed issue. To further narrow it down, I tried doing the same thing with SetMul. It works fine when I use the parameters L1DX (disable L1 cache exclusively) or CCD (disable L1 code cache).

There aren't many options for the cache in BIOS. I can enable or disable the cache, and while it's enabled I can switch between write-back and write-through. Neither of the latter two options have any effect on the issue.

So by disabling the code cache, the computer doesn't freeze when the ROTT HUD is enabled...seems strange to me, but please let me know if any of you recognize this error or have an idea of what's going on.

Hi OP,
I have this same issue with the Libretto 100CT that i recently purchased. Most games work fine -- but have similar issues with ROTT, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Day of the Tentacle.

With ROTT in particular, i couldn't even get by the screen with the "Apogee" logo spinning into view, unless i escaped out of it before it got very far. Just wantd to say thanks for sharing all the troubleshooting you have alrady done. The cache thing seems to work, but like you said, it makes it quite slow.

I will update if i get anywhere with this, but might be wishful thinking.