Sparcstation as mini-server

[Stan Silverman]

For reasons mostly of economy, we are interested in using a Sparcstation
for serving up to 10 users via 9600 baud serial connections as well as a
couple modems and a slow (1200 baud) data acquisition line.  The setup
would consist of Sparcstation, 16 serial ports, 2 or 3 SCSI disks (~600MB
each), 8mm tape, and tape cartridge. The users are on "dumb" terminals
doing mostly editing or Tektronix type graphics. The questions are:

1. Will the 4/60 be able to handle this load efficiently?
2. How many devices can effectively be put on the SCSI bus (should we look
   at larger capacity drives)?
3. Does anyone have experience with a 9-track tape drive on a 4/60?
4. Are there better alternatives? -- we figure the cost at about $20K

Please mail responses directly, if there is interest I will post a summary.