>> Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the hardware is too hard to find.
Two of my first contractor roles I had as a developer really opened my eyes to a lot of this.
We were building an inventory management system for a large company that built farm equipment. We started building it and once we got to the browser and mobile requirements, one of the VPs spoke up and asked if it would run on IE6 since they had not one, but THREE of their inventory legacy systems that still ran on Win98. This was in 2014, a full 6 years after many companies had stopped supporting it. And another 4 years since websites stopped supporting it.
The other one was for a very large, regional construction company. Same thing, we were building a web app for them and in one of the conference calls, one of the VP's was asking how this would run on Windows95 for the same reason. They had several legacy ERP systems that were running on Win95 and had specific requirements for stuff to run on that OS.
As a developer who was used to working with somewhat current tech - it was a real eye opener. It was crazy to think how many massive companies just didn't have the constitution to upgrade their stuff, and then by not doing so, had now dug themselves into an even deeper hole.
Once I started hearing stories about the details of this scenario, it made perfect sense to me since I had seen it multiple times. And not from little companies who didn't have the money or resources to upgrade, but massive Fortune 500 companies who just neglected their stuff until was too late.