I work for a data recovery company. I've personally been in the DR business for just over 20 years so I'm usually the guy who the younger engineers turn to when a vintage system comes in! ("Er.. what interface is that!?!").
You may (or may not) be surprised how many people are still using vintage systems in the course of their business.
Have just completed a recovery on a Western Digital FileCard 30 from 1985 with a Tandon ST506/RLL 30MB HDD and an 8-bit (IBM XT) WD1002-27X controller. The XT machine in question is used as a CNC milling machine controller.
The stepper motor actuator had failed causing loss of mechanical alignment. After 5 or so days of patient effort, recovered the data (bar a few unreadable sectors) and helped the customer get their system running again with an XT-IDE card and an old IDE drive - so at least they have now progressed a little further towards current technology
