One reason you should feel less sad about your old homelab hardware: it could be worse

this is such BS. There isn't anything wrong with old hardware or software... it just works!

COBOL being an example of running severely outdated equipment isn't correct imo. I actually helped maintained COBOL software for one of the agencies mentioned; while extremely verbose, it's fast and when run on a modern mainframe - as we had - is able to process an immense workload that would require significant planning to scale on mid-tier systems. Futhermore, it enables us to continue to run programs dating back to the '60s which continue to serve their purpose just fine. In fact, COBOL is still incredibly popular in the insurance, travel, and financial industries. /rant

I work for the government doing satellite bandwidth management. There are services out there that run quite efficiently with very old technology. Taking them offline to upgrade them would not be in anyone's best interest.

If it isn't broken, don't break it just to fix it.

I emulate Win 3.11, does that count?