FCP crashes while compressing long sequence

I posted this over that the FCP forum, but haven't found a solution yet. I have a long program, 1 hour 53 minutes, and when I try to run it through Compressor, FCP crashes on me every time (after 3+ hours of compression time.) I can run shorter segments of it - an hour goes through fine - but the whole thing doesn't work. Can anyone help me on this? I'm running OS 10.3.8, FCP HD (4.5) Compressor 1.2.1 and QT 6.5.2 on a Dual 1.8 with 1 Gig of RAM. I'm doing a 2 pass VBR.

I tried trashing the prefs, but that didn't help. Could this be a RAM problem? Do I need more? Is Compressor just not up to the task? Should I try a faster 1 pass encode?

AND, if I encode the piece as seperate segments is there a way to seamlessly join them in DVD SP?

AND - Remember to call your mother tomorrow!!

RJ