=3 applets hanging Netscape with 1.3.1_01a or 1.3.1_02

Question

The Java 2 v1.3.1_01a and 1.3.1_02 Plug-Ins completely hang Netscape 4.79 (and probably 4.x in general) and 6.2 when there are 3 or more simple applets in a single HTML page. This can be reproduced with a simple empty sub-class of java.applet.Applet and placing 3 or more instances of this in one HTML page (e.g. via jsp:plugin). [I used 16x16 applets in this case.]
Note that I could get 3 instances of an extremely heavy, slow-loading JApplet-based applet to load without hanging Netscape, so there appears to be a timing, deadlock issue here.
I have attempted to file a JDC bug on this matter, but it was not accepted as I could not reproduce the bug in Java 2 v1.4! Given that this issue spread to 1.3.1_02 (I originally found it in 1.3.1_01a), I am afraid it may leak into 1.4 at some later point, however!
Has anyone else experienced this?
Any workarounds?
[I use extremely lightweight applets in potentially large quantities (e.g. dozens) in HTML pages.  1.3.1_01a and 1.3.1_02 are thus complete non-starters in Netscape -- and I require 1.3.x functionalities in the applet.  1.3.1_01 works beautifully in Netscape and Internet Explorer for over 150 applets in one page -- though Netscape is substantially slower than Internet Explorer in this case.  1.3.1_01a and 1.3.1_02 work beautifully in Internet Explorer -- but hang Netscape completely in this case.]

Answer 1

I tried turning off Recycle ClassLoader.
I even tried turning off the "Default VM" stuff for Netscape (as that is new to 1.3.1_01a and higher, of course).
Neither made any significant difference. I sometimes got 3 applets to come up on a page without hanging, but visiting a couple such pages produced a nearly guaranteed hang.
I wonder if this is related to the spurious HTTP request the Plug-In makes in Netscape.
The Plug-In (1.3.1 and higher at least) appears to always makes 1 additional HTTP request in my experience when in Netscape as compared to Explorer. I never would have noticed this except that this request happens to hit a servlet which logs such things with a request with no path-info (and it requires path-info).