To rambus or not to rambus...

hi folks,
I have a dilemma which someone may have already lived through and may be willing to share his or her informed opinion. I have received an Asus P4T-E motherboard with a Pentium 4 1.8Ghz processor, a 256mb PC600 stick of Syncmax RDRAM and two dummy sticks. My question is: am I correct in the understanding that the only way for me to get the motherboard to POST so that I can establish whether any of these components is in good shape is by investing in a second 256Mb PC600 RDRAM chip? For what people are paying for these even on Ebay, wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a modest used board and a small DDR memory and attempt to use the processor in which case I would at least know that the board and memory are theoretically not the problem? Lastly, if I do get the rambus ram is it true that if the other stick is defective I will still be at square 1?
Thank you for opinions.
Richard

Rambus needs to be paired. Since it is rare and thus expensive now, I would definitely say that the new (used) mobo and DDR are the way to go. You could even try ebaying the RDRAM stick you have to pay for some of it. DDR is cheaper and easier.

Thanks for the response. I guess the dearth of replies speaks volumes to how the Intel/Rambus attempt to increase memory prices by controlling supply backfired and made rambus the "Edsel" of the chip world. Others have also recommended I get off the rambus wagon because it destines you to pay outrageous prices every time you want to upgrade while DDR ram seems to continue to go down!

DDR prices have actually stabilized or even increased a bit recently, but you are still much better off with ddr than rdram. DDR is the present format of choice.