Unfortunately the original consoles will stop working and existing outside of museums over time; I see projects like this as archival work, so that in tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of years people can still rebuild and play these games.

Someone elsewhere pointed out that PS1 disks (or any disk based system for that matter) suffers from disk rot, so likewise, what is now considered piracy should also be considered archival work since the original disks will stop working.

something something entropy, something something the inexorable passage of time.