When saved as part of ~/.emacs, and having a reasonable current of SLIME downloaded from CVS under ~/work/slime, the following code makes a good, minimal startup sequence (with thanks to Bill Clementson):

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/work/slime") 
(setq slime-lisp-implementations 
      `((abcl ("~/work/abcl/abcl"))
	(sbcl ("sbcl")) ))
(require 'slime) 
(setq slime-truncate-lines nil)
(slime-setup '(slime-fancy slime-asdf slime-banner))