convergence failure

[friedman $#at#$ tammy.harvard.edu (Dawn Friedman)]

   I'm using G88 to do UHF calculations with a large basis set on some alkali
 oxides.  I'm feeling out a reaction path using single-point calculations
 (optimizations to come later.)  Some of these single points give me a
 convergence failure in SCF, although an energy is reported first.
 1)  Does this energy have any meaning?
 2)  Why should one geometry converge, while another, differing only by the
 C_inf_v symmetry being broken (180 -> 179.9 degrees) does not?  The energies
 are identical.  Sometimes the nonlinear version will converge where the linear
 did not.
 3)  Can I work around this problem and still have useful results?  Is there
 some method a bit less sweeping than the SLEAZY keyword for getting SCF
 convergence?  Unfortunately, I can't afford to do SCF=qc -- they take too long
 and often don't converge anyway.
   --Dawn