I figured it was bootloader related. The worst are my older mega1280 boards (one arduino mega1280 and one early Seeeduino mega1280 board), I can't go much above 69KB before AVRDUDE pukes after uploading all the data. I haven't been able to locate a optiboot for the mega1280 board nor the changes to the boards.txt if would take to run it if I located it. Now my 644P loads up real close to the flash limit without complaint.
Is the Optiboot that is distributed with IDE 1.0.3 the latest all fixed version?
Lefty