What I do is continue to use old hardware and software, then update for things the old ones cannot do. For decades I have seen people short-sightedly treat their electronics as disposable - only a few years later to become nostalgic about how their modern replacements lack things that they loved. Especially with creative people - writers, illustrators, musicians, etc. With cars it’s almost understandable, because so many people trade in their old car for credit, but my experience has been that this does not usually happen with computers. So why discard them? Also, it’s easy to trade up within a given era - if your DOS box was only so-so back in the day, you could replace it with a top shelf model straight out of somebody’s garbage.
So, I don’t grieve, I celebrate. If I want to play or work in MS-DOS-WinX, MacOS 6-9, TOS, POSIX-X - whatever - I just start that system and use it. It works better than an emulator, offers full compatibility, full driver and hardware access, while being slightly less portable.
I just got a new Android phone; I am torn about install a C64 emulator.
On the one hand, I want it. On the other hand, how else will I show my kids how to play Forbidden Forest?
That’s a really sweet essay, and I learned a lot.
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