I've played around with a handful of B&W lab films. I came to the conclusion (I forget why) that Selectol (not Selectol-Soft, but the long-discontinued Selectol) paper developer was as close as I was going to get to D-97 without resorting to mixing my own from component chems. I found a cache of ancient cans of the stuff for my experiments, but I think Photographer's Formulary also sells it. It worked fine.
On the other hand, D-76 (I used ID-11) also worked fine, and I already have that mixed up for more normal films. And because you're using this well outside its intended application and are having to do all kinds of carefully controlled tests to determine the best ISO and development time and so on, what does it matter? Use something, anything, and stick with that.
Duncan