Like a lot of things, it depends. In the early 80s, they tried to break the 'small' computer market that had been using minis like PDP-11s or DG Novas. A saw a lot of small installations at places like car dealerships and repair houses. You strapped a cheap terminal [Wyse 25/50/60/75 were very popular]. My local Chinese restaurant still runs with 3 Wyse 60s talking to something in the back. It used to be a Wyse 386:16 running Xenix.
As Charlie said he ran a UUCP server on one. Someone (3COM maybe) added an ethernet and an 8/16 line serial board like the Rocket Board (which I think I may still have one around) and sold them as terminal servers. to larger systems.
A few things happen --- the 68000 style machines such as Masscomp, Apollo, and Sun could do the same thing much better and were not much different in price (remember an original PC/AT 286 with max memory and DOS cost $5K at computerland and it was another $1k for Xenix plus whatever the app cost). Compaq was cheaper but not much. A diskless Sun3 was 7.5K also, but you needed at least one full Sun3 to be the server (and they also sucked, most people bought add-in disk Unix for another 4K -- another good story for another time]. The Apps cost the same between Xenix and Sun and that sort of sealed the deal, particularly when the apps moved to DOS and then were cheaper still.
So if you wanted a timing sharing box there were options that were in the same price range and basically 'better' AND IBM/Compaq started to push DOS and that ecosystem which was cheaper.