Hardware Hobbyists vs. Emulator Jockeys

I must admit to some mixed feelings about this question of upgrading classic machines. But I would suggest that there's a significant difference between modifications to an Apple 2 and a Bendix G-15. In the case of high-volume commodity machines, modifying one specimen doesn't hinder the historian in studying the machine. For that matter, if many of those systems were modified when current, the types of modifications that evolved over the years would be an interesting study in itself. But if someone makes an irreversible modification to a machine of which only a handful still exist, then that substantially increases the chances that at some point, no examples will exist in their original condition. Then significant historical information will be lost. There's also a big difference in where that machine exists. If it's purely a hobby machine that won't likely survive its owner, I'm not as concerned as I would be for a machine that is part of a museum collection. When a researcher visits a museum to study an artifact, it is assumed that the artifact has been preserved as carefully and as accurately as possible. I'll stop now before I get long winded going into the 3 or 4 tangents that come to mind. BLS