I have, for example, a very good OCR software package that was never updated to run under Win9x or later ... It sort-of works with Win9x, but not really well.

This has often enough been the case to warrant maintaining an old PC. I use one that allows me to switch the CPU speed to a much slower speed, so old device programmers, and the like, which rely on archaic and arcane ways of timing their operation will still work.

Under that old version of Windows, I'm able to produce "real" backups, too, so that's another reason to keep the thing working. It can talk to those old 200 GB 8mm tape drives, and knows how to do it with several (SCSI) channels in parallel, to several target drives so I can actually do the dailies within a 24-hour span.

RE