nice !
now with the game up and running again, I want you to start a new game and with your first "guy", see if you can "catch" all 10 of your people and don't put them down on the suface. tough thing to do but its do able
what happens is catching all your dudes, slows down the ram to the point where you can go baiter hunting
if it looks like youre about to die, just fire a couple times and it gorks out the baiters to another part of the world. I do this for a while and then lay down all my guys for a great score on the first spaceship. usually I get around 30,000 points and extra smart bombs, spaceships to really start the game with a bang
see if you can do it
if this were my game, I would replace all the capacitors on the sound card and power supply immediately for long life. the game pcb too
also cleaning all the header pins with a dremel tool cant hurt either. shinying up them pins gives the pins inside the connectors a fresh contact to touch. some even replace the header pins with square ones for better electron flow.
the round pins give less surface area for the connector pins to touch
once you get real good at it, maybe you can flip the game over and get a million points if you can defend good enough
good luck