The other nice thing about these old machines is you can understand the whole thing. You get a better idea of what is fundamental and what is just fashion.
IDK. The android emulators I run on my Mac sure don't seem perfect. For one thing, scrolling a RecyclerView up and down using the mouse doesn't always work right. Gesture detection seems to lag or miss events sometimes. Working with a physical android device is often more stable and "solid" IME.
OTOH android emulators do seem pretty fast.
Not to mention the fun of playing with front panel switches. I built an emulator for one long before I acquired my IMSAI. They did not behave at all how I expected. Even more interesting the front panels are not synchronous on these "hobby" machines from the 70s but instead are timed by RC circuits that are supposed to be "close enough" to the CPUs clock.
Not all of these problems are from age (although that has an effect), the hardware was pretty flaky even when new.
That is by far one of the most curious things I've ever read on Hacker News.