well - yesterday I had some issues
the computer that I wanted to work on refused to load SUSE 9 because it was a newer model
So I decided to load SUSE 9 on another machine. and my backup external HDD did not have space so I moved some files around and by that time it was time for bed. I am a wuss I need my sleep
and I had one more step to do. the machine needed to be backed up by clonezilla before I load SUSE 9 so that I can restore it back after my experimentation with SUSE9.

So today I shall clonezilla and then only shall I load SUSE 9
Hopefully tomorrow I have something to Post.

The issue is now resolved

method done is as follows

a) Insert cd SLES9 SP3 disk 1 in cd drive
b) YAST2 - install software choose kernel - select bigsmp kernel and accept
c) YAST2 handles all the work required and requests for reboot
d) Reboot confirms that memory is now reported correctly at approx 4 GB

cat /proc/meminfo|grep Mem
MemTotal: 6163452 kB
MemFree: 4925760 kB

checked /boot
and found

initrd -> initrd-2.6.5-7.244-bigsmp

Thanks a lot for all help by different users