diff --git a/general-info/cmu-README.txt b/general-info/cmu-README.txt
index 5e2f3a0c70e61d0ab35f5b228a9ec0d293997df3..5e2724f8a40047598d50b33dba3b5037ce7e67a9 100644
--- a/general-info/cmu-README.txt
+++ b/general-info/cmu-README.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,18 @@
-To get CMU Common Lisp, run:
-    /usr/cs/etc/modmisc - cs.misc.cmucl
+CMU Common Lisp is a public domain implementation of Common Lisp.  Both
+sources and executables are freely available via anonymous FTP; this software
+is "as is", and has no warranty of any kind.  CMU and the authors assume no
+responsibility for the consequences of any use of this software.  See
+doc/release-notes.txt for a description of the state of the release you have.
+
+CMU Common Lisp is available for:
+    HPPA "snake" workstations running HPUx 9.X
+    Sun SPARC workstations running SunOS (but not Solaris)
+    DECstations (pmaxes) running Mach.
+
+There are also frozen versions for Mach on the SPARC and IBM RT.
+
+To get CMU Common Lisp on facilities Mach machines, run:
+    /usr/cs/etc/modmisc -release beta - cs.misc.cmucl
 
 This establishes /usr/misc/.cmucl as a symbolic link to the release area.
 In your .login, add CMU CL to your path:
@@ -9,14 +22,14 @@ Then run "lisp".  Note that the first time you run Lisp, it will take AFS
 several minutes to copy the image into its local cache.  Subsequent starts
 will be much faster.
 
-Or, you can run directly out of the AFS release area (which may be necessary on
-SunOS machines).  Put this in your .login shell script:
+Instead of using modmisc, you can create the symbolic links by hand, or run out
+of the AFS release area.  This method of installation is necessary on HPUx and
+SunOS machines.  Put this in your .login shell script:
     setenv CMUCLLIB "/afs/cs/misc/cmucl/@sys/beta/lib"
     setpath -i /afs/cs/misc/cmucl/@sys/beta
 
 After setting your path, "man cmucl" will give an introduction to CMU CL and 
-"man lisp" will describe command line options.  For SunOS installation notes,
-see the README file in the SunOS release area. 
+"man lisp" will describe command line options. 
 
 See /usr/misc/.cmucl/doc for release notes and documentation.  Rather old
 hardcopy documentation is available as tech reports in the document room.
@@ -24,15 +37,104 @@ hardcopy documentation is available as tech reports in the document room.
 Send bug reports and questions to cmucl-bugs@cs.cmu.edu.  If you send a bug
 report to gripe, they will just forward it to this mailing list.
 
+See "man cmucl" (man/man1/cmucl.1) for other general information.
+
+SunOS credit:
+
+The SunOS support was written by Miles Bader and Ted Dunning.
+
+Site initialization:
+
+To run CMU CL, place bin/ in PATH and setenv CMUCLLIB to point to lib/.  The
+file lib/site-init.lisp contains site-specific initialization, such as setting
+of the site name.  Any site-specific initialization should be placed in this
+file; this file can be compiled.  See bin/sample-wrapper for a shell script
+template that sets up environment variables and then runs CMU CL.  You may
+want to have your EMACS maintainer place doc/cmu-user.info in the info root, or
+you can setenv INFOPATH to include the doc/ directory.
+
+Note: In order to use Motif (and the graphical debugger) with X servers from
+non-OSF vendors (like Sun) you may need to set the environment variable
+XKEYSYMDB to point to the file lib/XKeySymDB.  Otherwise, you will get many
+error messages every time a new connection is opened to the CMU CL motifd.
+This file is read by the X11R5 Xt in order to augment the keysym database with
+certain OSF vendor keysyms that Motif wants to use.  If you get errors about
+being unable to start the Motif server, try setting DISPLAY to the full
+hostname, like:
+    lisp-rt1.slisp.cs.cmu.edu:0
+
+and delete any .motif-socket-* files in /tmp.
+
+SunOS/SPARC Notes:
+
+With this release, CMU CL should require no special effort to run on Sparc10's
+under SunOS.  Solaris is still  not supported.
+
+At least 16 meg of memory is recommended, and more is better.  Your system
+maintainer may need to configure extra paging space for large Lisp application.
+
+It is not possible to mmap a file in a tmpfs filesystem.  If /tmp is a "tmpfs"
+filesystem, then you must setenv CMUCL_EMPTYFILE to the pathname of some file
+(in a normal filesystem) that can be used instead of /tmp/empty.  The "df"
+command will show tmpfs filesystems as mounted on "swap".  If this problem
+exists on your system, lisp will get an error like:
+    mapin: mmap: Invalid argument
+    ensure_space: Failed to validate 67108864 bytes at 0x01000000
+
+
 Running CMU CL:
 
-Run "lisp".  Try also "lisp -edit", which starts Hemlock.  Hemlock will use X
-if the DISPLAY environment variable is defined, otherwise it will use terminal
-i/o based on TERM and /etc/termcap.
+Run "lisp".  If Hemlock is loaded, you can also "lisp -edit".  Hemlock will
+use X if the DISPLAY environment variable is defined, otherwise it will use
+terminal i/o based on TERM and /etc/termcap.  If the Motif debugger is loaded,
+it will be invoked on errors and by INSPECT.
 
 Source availability:
 
-Lisp and documentation sources are publicly readable in /afs/cs/project/clisp.
-All CMU written code is public domain, but CMU CL also makes use of several
-imported packages: PCL, CLX and XP.  Although these packages are copyrighted,
-they may be freely distributed without any licensing agreement or fee.
+Lisp and documentation sources are available via anonymous FTP ftp to any CMU
+CS machine.  [See the "Distribution" section for FTP instructions.]  All CMU
+written code is public domain, but CMU CL also makes use of two imported
+packages: PCL and CLX.  Although these packages are copyrighted, they may be
+freely distributed without any licensing agreement or fee.
+
+The release area contains a source distribution, which is an image of all the
+".lisp" source files used to build version 17c:
+    17c-source.tar.Z (4.9 meg)
+
+All of our files (including the release area) are actually in the AFS file
+system.  On the release machines, the FTP server's home is the release
+directory: /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/clisp/release.  The actual working source
+areas are in other subdirectories of "clisp", and you can directly "cd" to
+those directories if you know the name.  Due to the way anonymous FTP
+access control is done, it is important to "cd" to the source directory with a
+single command, and then do a "get" operation.
+
+Totally machine-independent compiler code:
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/compiler/*.lisp
+See especially node.lisp and ir1tran.lisp for the front end.  vop.lisp,
+vmdef.lisp and ir2tran.lisp for the back end.
+
+Stuff that is dependent on our choice of object format, but not
+particularly machine-dependent:
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/compiler/generic/*.lisp
+
+Compiler back-end for the PMAX and SPARC:
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/compiler/mips/*.lisp
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/compiler/sparc/*.lisp
+
+Miscellaneous Lisp run-time code:
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/code/*.lisp
+
+C run-time code:
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/src/beta/lisp/*
+
+A very drafty version of an internal design document: (160 pages) Some of
+the "tex" files may be more humanly readable, since many formatting
+commands need to be added.  There is some inaccurate (dated) material in
+the compiler description.
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/hackers/ram/docs/internals/*.tex
+    /afs/cs/project/clisp/hackers/ram/docs/internals/design.ps
+
+See hackers/ram/docs/internals/architecture.tex (the System Architecture
+chapter in the internals document) for more information on the source tree
+organization.