Advice needed: Entry point into things PDP-8

Greetings all... I have been pondering something and would love to receive feedback from you. The thing is, I would like to have something pdp8-ish that would allow me to play a little bit with the programming languages that were available for these machines, FORTRAN 4K and FORTRAN IV in particular. Now, I would love to be able to time some FORTRAN jobs just to get an idea about what it was like back then. I am aware of PiDP-8, simh, as well as SBC6120, SBC6120RBC. I happen to have three VT78 cpu boards (sans the RAM board) and two vt278 cpu boards. All were in rather sorry condition; I picked them up from a junk pile that was stacked several feet high and in which the contents were mostly random. Thus, the VT78 boards' components were scratched and in fact two of them are missing the control panel ROM chip. Otherwise they are complete, but I am missing the RAM boards. The VT278 boards were further abused by someone who yanked out the oscillators and a few TTL chips, damaging several traces, which I have now repaired. Alas, only one of them has the HM6120 cpu chip, and I do not know if it is good or not. Both are missing the SMC5037 CRT generator chip. Other than that, they are complete. So, now that we all know what I have, let me say out loud what I've been thinking: If I try to build actual hardware: I've read that the VT278 has serious software compatibility issues with older software due to the use of the HM6121 I/O chip. So even if I get an adequate keyboard, buy the CRT chip and manage to use it to drive a monitor, I would need an original floppy drive system and media, because I do not have the DP278 serial comms board that would allow me to send the VT278 a program to run; For the VT78, I would need to hack a memory board, and, since it can be coaxed to accept a program to run if it is fooled into thinking that it is loading a program from an MR78/paper tape, perhaps I could make it boot something. I would need to wire-up and arduino or something like it to translate the keyboard and display terminal chatter in the serial console into something usable. But, that's three hardware projects (memory board, MR78-like contraption, microcontrolled serial console translator)... The last hardware option is to go and make an SBC6120RBC; I would need to buy programmers for the GAL/PAL devices, and I've heard that not all programmers can deal with the kind of chips used in it. And, if it turns out that the HM6120 chip that I have is bad, I would have to hunt down one of those rare beasts.. It would be awesome, though, to have an SBC6120RBC up and running, and be able to time actual hardware running FORTRAN. And then comes the emulation option, with the PiDP-8. I have to say that the emulation of the blinkenlights is very, very attractive to me, and this option is a no-brainer hardware-wise. So... am I missing something in my estimation of the effort involved in these options? What would _you_ do? Carlos.