I have some large systems of linear equations.  The solutions are probability generating functions.  I can get solutions in a few minutes for systems of up to n= 200 eqns or so, but Maple just cycles indefinitely if I try to solve much larger systems.  I really only need to perform Gaussian Elimination, as I only need to solve for one of the n solutions.  The matrices are sparse, there are only 3 non-zero entries per row.  I tried to get help from the manuals but I get the impression that sparse solutions are only available for numeric computations.   Doesn't Maple allow for sparse symbolic solutions?  If so, how to do it?