That’s not the point of it though. Not about whether you could fix or maintain it when operating it, it’s about not operating it if presents a notable risk of failure. The Smithsonian doesn’t start grinding cornmeal in a bowl from the Mississippians. The Connecticut Museum doesn’t take it’s colt rifles out the range for target practice. These organizations would use a replica to demonstrate what it was like, as opposed to risking damaging an original article.

Thats also not even necessary true either. While they may have invented there various consoles, at some point it will be nearly impossible to acquire replacement parts. They don’t manufacture the ICs or mainboards or the various discreet components. So if there’s no old stock, how would they “fix” a broken N64 (or later) console? It might be theoretically possible to fab a NEC VR4300 to replace a dead one, but probably cost hundreds of thousands, and it wouldn’t be broken anyway if you hadn’t left if running 16 hours a day so some sweaty tourists could play on real hardware.

And why would they? It would cost more, be more work, and have less reliable results than using a completely replacable computer running an emulator. The entire consumer facing side of the equation is worse if they run the games on the actual hardware, as long as the consumer doesn’t see it, which is really down to how they design the exhibit.

Do you think the public is understanding enough to accept that “The NES is really old and it broke so you can’t play super mario bros today”, when it’s the only day you are gonna be there? Temper tantrum, bad reviews, loss of face. From what I understand, Japan actually cares about all that, so Nintendo probably does as well.

That’s the case… For now.

No one would have cared to preserve a Mosin Nagant from 1892 when they were making 500,000 of them, why would they? You can just go and buy more, the factory is right over there. Fast forward 132 years later, they are scarce antiques. And in another 100 years, there may only be a dozen left.

The entire field of computers as we know it, integrated circuits, is about half as old as that particular rifle, and the technology has changed so fast, it’s really crazy.

So while it might seem like that’s reasonable now, I mean the people who designed those systems are often still alive, even still working. Of course we can still fix and use them.

Now give it 60 or so years, your sitting around in you retirement community, sad you lost the auction for a 2003 eMachines tower PC with all the stickers still attached, kicking yourself about how you tossed one out back in the day.

At least you kept your Atari Jaguar, kept in a hermetically sealed container, that managed to save when you had to evacuate from the 2nd Finnish-Korean Hyperwar.

Edit: Abominable spelling

Your body is going to fail eventually, so you might as well stop brushing your teeth and start drinking scotch at breakfast. /s

You really think an old parchment document would survive being in a high vacuum and near absolute zero?

Yeah sure, nothing lasts forever, but the really not the point. Your goal is to attempt to preserve your articles forever.

Are you going to fall short? Absolutely, but your still required to attempt to do so. So you avoid doing anything directly harmful, such as operating an old computer, firing an old cannon, or diving an old car.