Hmm, so your argument was not reliability of retrocomputers in paticular, but more generally, "how the hardware worked" (and some just happened to be reliable enough for many people), and all these things shaped the understanding of the next generation of innovators who invented our PCs. Thus it's important to preserve the hardware as a key of understanding how we get here from there, because there will be no living witness for the future generation - and this is your actual point.

I think I now understand your argument now.