Even if the documentation was public, there's no guarantee anyone would take the time to get drivers working on ARM in modern Linux.

I actually think emulation is a good long-term solution for legacy applications. My NES rom of Super Mario Brothers is probably the most cross-platform and future-proof piece of software on my computer, because every platform has an NES emulator! You write (or port) an emulator once per platform, and suddenly the whole NES library opens up.