people are skeptical of the chips; they seem to do nothing for some cars, and work as advertised on others...i have the proecm on my car, and for a $250 chip, it works well enough for me. the more and more i learn about these various chips for our cars, the more i suspect the reason mine seems to have a better result than most RS owners is the fact that the 1.8 doesn't have a knock sensor intervening (and therefore cancelling out the timing advance) while things are still at a perfectly safe level of operation...but no one really knows for sure what's at work with the chips...
subaru changed the shift linkage in '97, so things like the kartboy levers won't fit into the cup on the older shift assembly. so you have 2 options: swap your entire linkage assembly out for an RS linkage, or get something like the STi short shifter that has the entire linkage, OR simply have the fulcrum point on your stock shift level cut off and welded up about an inch higher. Kostamojen had this done to his car, and eventually ended up switching over to a donor RS linkage...i bought the lever off him for $10, and it works just as well as a kartboy, although without the bushings it still has a little side to side slop.