SYSRUTH@UTORPHYS.BITNET.UUCP (02/27/87)
If you really meant 54MB, then you are going to be lucky to get all that on the disk as it is. You will also need site-specific tailoring, and what about DECnet? Even without the latter, you will probably not have more than a couple of MB left for anything else. We are running 3 uVAX-II's off RD53's (71MB). We have uVMS, DECnet, Fortran, C, Pascal, a couple of 1000-block math libraries, and generally not a whole lot more. All the system directory trees are clean (i.e. no old versions sitting around of either uVMS or site-specific files). We also have a few system people who use at most about 1 MB each (big stuff is on the big VAX). Our system disks are chronically full; generally there is no more than about 10-15MB free at any one time. Remember you will need page and swap files there are well; not huge, but big enough to be able to boot the system with before you install any secondary ones on other disks. You will probably also want a dump file, which would need to be the same size as your memory. Yes, you can live without a dump file, but they are nice to have on a new system. In short, we have found even 71MB to be cramped. I would not count on having any useful space left for users on a 54MB disk. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but this is my experience. Our other 3 uVAXes run off 160MB disks (non-DEC) and that gives us generally 40 MB of breathing space very comfortably. A much pleasanter situation. Just had another thought: VMS upgrades generally require as much as 8MB of free space. Something else you will want to remember. Ruth Milner Systems Manager University of Toronto Physics SYSRUTH@UTORPHYS (BITNET) P.S. In a message a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we were getting a couple of 9744's to use as system disks. I got the model wrong; they are 9784's. Sorry if I raised anyone's hopes of hearing useful things about a new drive.