Questions about Pyramid/Sequent

[Chris A. Anderson]

We're a commercial health care claims management shop for
large hospitals and clinics.  We're currently looking at 
several possible hardware choices for replacing our aging
Plexus (Sys V.2) computers.  Two of the bids we have received
are:
	Pyramid 9815  -or-  Sequent S81 (4 processors)

Both are configured with 32 Mb main memory, 8 Gb disk
storage (yes, that's 8 Gigabytes), with terminal servers
hooked via ethernet to the machine. We are committed for
the nonce to System V.

We plan on having 80-100 users, mostly running in-house
database applications (file inquiry/update type stuff).
Of those, approx. 20 are development people.

The questions we have are:

	1. Will having 80-100 users concurrently on the
	   Pyramid degrade terminal response time signif-
	   icantly?  We have been told that the 9815 
	   doesn't have the horsepower to service this
	   number of users on ethernet.

	2. Several people have said that the Sequent 
	   will not handle 8 Gb of storage with anything 
	   less than 8 CPU's installed. Is there any
	   truth to this? Why?

These questions are sparked by statements by the different
vendors in question, and by responses to previous postings
I've made to the net asking for information on the two machines.

Anybody have any experiences that they care to share?  By E-mail, 
please.  If there's any interest, I'll post (or e-mail) a summary.
Thanks in advance!!!

Chris
--
| Chris Anderson        email : pacbell!sactoh0!utgard!chris           |
| QMA, Inc.                or : ...!{csuchico,csusac}!fenris           |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Of *course* I speak for my employer, would he have it any other way? |