The 64MB RAM sounds like it might be the problem. Any input has to go into RAM before it can be written to a hard drive or other place. And the RAM has to be sufficient to contain the program that's running, and to keep recieving the "incoming," while it's swapping out the write to disk.

64MB was considered pretty good when Win95 was new, and a "fair but modest" amount of memory for Win98; but even if you're still with the same operating system you've probably added other programs that really need a little more. Quite likely, the music program you're using now, which has to be in RAM to run, is much larger than typical programs of "that era," so with "newer" programs you may need more memory to do the same things that older programs could handle more compactly.

If you can find it, both Win95 and Win98 have a "System Monitor" utility that you can open up to watch what percentage of memory is being used. That might tell you whether this is really your problem, if you watch it during a test recording.

Adding memory to most desktop machines is fairly simple, and usually not too expensive unless you go to very large amounts, assuming that you can get the right chips for your machine. If you don't have the original op manual, you can usually check with one of the memory chip websites to identify what you might need and whether it's available. Many laptops use(d) "special configuration" memory chips, so getting them for an older machine may or may not be feasible.

If you are still running Win95, it's probably not practical to go to more than around 128MB, and for Win98 around 256MB; although you could probably double either of those limits if it suits the chips you can get. (There were recommended maximums for those operating systems, but I'm relying on very old "memory.")

The problem with having more installed memory is that the machine has to use part of the memory to keep track of where the work is in the rest of the memory, and the "memory management task" starts to slow things down if you have too much installed. The memory management utilities in Win95 and Win98 were rather "primitive" by today's standards, but should handle any reasonable upgrade.

John