Can a 32 bit support 4 gigs of ram or is it something like 3 or 3.5?

Answer 1

Depend on the board, some can reach 3.1xGB and some just below 3GB.
I tried this on a number of boards and most times 3.2GB is most I can see, its stupid, as I really do need 8GB on my system, but only when running 64bit XP or Vista64, sadly a lot of our inhouse software are 16bits so its not an option.
Only way I can do this is to run 2003 Server enterprise, but its a waste for just one machine.