SUMMARY: How much RAM in powerbook to run MCL 2.0

[Mark.Kantrowitz@GLINDA.OZ.CS.CMU.EDU]

My original question was:

     How much RAM do people recommend putting into a PowerBook which will
     be used to run MCL? I want responses that are a bit more informative
     than "as much as possible". For example, responses like
         -  I had 4mb, but it really wasn't enough. MCL thrashed to death.
         -  6mb was comfortable, but for large programs tended to GC a lot.
         -  I use 10mb and have never had any problems.
     will be useful.
     
     Also, are there any special considerations I should take into account
     when selecting a PowerBook?


Summary:

MCL can use as much memory as is available in the Mac. Steve says he's
used 32M on an fx, and thinks they've run CYC on something like 64 or 128M.

The powerbooks 100, 145, and 170 have an upper bound of 8M, but
the new powerbooks max out at 14M (PB 160, 180) or 24M (Duo 210, 230).
The 170 has some minor problems with MCL and the sleep mode.
      
Apple recommends putting MCL in a 3Mb partition. With 2Mb taken up by the
system, this sort of implies a 6Mb machine. If you want to run anything
else while running MCL, you can't go lower than 6Mb.

The consensus seems to be: 
   -  4Mb is doable but painful for small/medium code, but not for any
      substantial development. You can run, but only with most inits
      removed and being careful to avoid opening too many files at a time,
      since Fred's buffers are stored entirely in RAM.
   -  6Mb is the minimum for reasonable MCL programming, without too much
      pain. 6Mb might be ok for giving demos or exploring ideas and small 
      programs, but not for substantial development or working with large
      datafiles. 
   -  8Mb is the minimum for *comfortable* Lisp development, though if
      your code is a memory hog, you'll probably need more. If you have
      8Mb, put MCL in a 4Mb memory partition (more if you're not going to
      use other programs while using MCL).

So, to summarize, 6Mb is the minimum, but 8Mb is more realistic. 

Thanks to 
	Steve Strassmann <straz@cambridge.apple.com>
	Kent Sandvik <ksand@apple.com>
	Thomas_E_Morgan@cup.portal.com
	Mathieu Lafourcade <lafourca@imag.fr>
	David Levy <entropy.dave@applelink.apple.com>
	Bob Amble <amble@applelink.apple.com>
	Michael D. Young <myoung@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
	Rainer Joswig <joswig@informatik.uni-hamburg.de>
	Rich lynch@ils.nwu.edu
	Bill St. Clair <bill@cambridge.apple.com>
	William Fitzgerald <will@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu>
for their replies.

--mark
P.S. If anybody is selling an 8Mb 170 to get a 180, please send me email.