I believe most fans of retro hardware want just to relive the experience of bygone years. That being the case, this - the 1990s hardware technician "experience" - is just what most want. They WANT to fiddle with cards, WANT to "score" that rare card with unobtanium components, they WANT to dirty their hands, and then savour the result.
Others are like old cars enthusiasts, trying to preserve and maintain old hardware and software just for the sake of keeping it working as it was decades ago. Their pleasure also is derived from the challenge, or the exclusivity. "I own the only working $old_computer this side of the pond", etc.
Emulators please the archivists, that want to avoid any and all losses in software, sometimes from acknowledging that old hardware is limited and will more so every moment in the future, sometimes from an almost pathological "accumulator" side of their (ours?) personalities. Or just to make things easier? Most (of all) old software and games would fit in a few modern HDDs.
With a few exceptions, my opinion is that old games and software are usually crap. Nobody builds a retro PC to USE Lotus 1-2-3 in real scenarios or to play some obscure DOS game unless it has some special meaning to them. Again, in my opinion, the retro computing is much more than just that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
