FC5: strange emacs problem

["Dean S. Messing" <deanm sharplabs com>]

Dear list,

I have a strange problem that I would like to verify
is not just on my system.

In an empty file, I do:

C-x 8 !

This should insert the inverted ! (i.e. ¡).  On my FC5 machine (which
I'm not on right now :-) Emacs goes into a loop with "Garbage
collection ..."  being printed over and over again in the echo area,
and CPU goes to 100%.  I can kill it with the usual C-g but I can't
write any of the special characters from the ISO 8859 character set as
I can on the (Mandrake) system I'm now on (running emacs v. 21.3.2).

I know I have the font installed because they show up when I do
C-h h (view-hello-file).

Does this work properly on others' systems?

Do you any clues on how to fix the problem?

FYI, you can see the key bindings for C-x 8 ! and all the other
funny characters with C-x C-h.

Dean