Yeah, but with modern equipment you can use it only strictly for what it is intended, and frequently not even for that, due to various bugs.

With ancient equipment, like the measurement instruments from Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard, due to having excellent maintenance manuals that allowed a perfect understanding of their internals, it was often possible to find ways to use them for things that had never been foreseen by their designers.

I prefer that very much to the modern instruments that may have a lot of additional features that I do not need, while the features that I do need may have annoying limitations that cannot be surpassed.

Yes, but on top of lacking features, normal people couldn’t afford gadgets from the 1900s. They were only affordable past their prime which is why I don’t understand the nostalgia. They’re only good as museum pieces

Also modern equipment is not strictly only for their original purpose. A lot of modern equipment is hackable now.