I have just checked in code to increase the page size from 1k to 4k.
This gives a clearly noticeable increase of speed and decrease of
preallocated memory. 1k may have been a well-dimensioned pagesize
at the time when /bin/sh was 20k, but not when it has exceeded 200k.
My favourite example: Starting Emacs made previously ~1700 pagefaults,
after the change it only makes ~500.
Things that can cause trouble:
To run old binaries 'options COMPAT_VAX1K' must be in the kernel.
A new kernel cannot be loaded by the old boot program, but a new
boot program can load an old kernel.

-- Ragge