Good Shakedown Test for 36xx?

[Doug Evans <DE%phoenix.sch.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Tue, 11 Apr 89 00:22 EDT
    From: pan@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com (Paul Pangaro)

    My TSSE uses a loop consisting essentially of:

    (loop do (apropos 'a)
	     (cp::com-clear-output-history)
	     (si:full-gc))

    The purpose is to run the hell out of the machine to show up
    "errors". I have a new machine and I want to check it out fully
    (with tests of I/O ports etc., in addition to the above).

    Realizing that no single test can be exhaustive, any opinions on
    the utility of this? Anything else that is also simple, which more
    fully "tests" the system? Anybody have a suite short and sweet
    that tests lots?

Paul ... I have a three step reliability check for Lispms:

Level 1:  A machine boots a world, loads a (decently complex) login init
	  file, and completes a full GC.

Level 2:  The machine sucessfully completes a Save World Complete.  This
	  actually pounds the disk IO (and the rest of the machine) more
	  than a GC or regular paging.

Level 3:  The machine sucessfully boots the new world (confirming that
	  the disk save was good), loads the same login init file, and
	  completes another full GC. 

This is expensive in terms of disk file space, but is a very good test
for Lispm hardware.

    (By the way, should this run out of swapping space? With small
    paging area, it only repeats a few times...)

    Best,
    PANgaro