"foolproof"
tri x and diafine 2-bath
pinhole exposure's going to be out the window---if hyou want to dense them up, then use like hc-110 dil a...but no longer than like 10 minutes or so--you want to keep from developing fog....you can give the pinholes extra "smack" by just using grade 5 or so in the darkroom when it's printing time. I suspect that it's just density that's your problem at this point...do youself a bunch of test shots to account for the film reciprocity--that's the problem you have to first overcome--kodak data books have a graphs for reciprocity that have worked perfectly for me. When you get the proper exposure, just about any developer should work--depends on the "look" you want after that.