There’s also the PCem (as well as forks 86Box and PCBox) software emulators which are excellent ways of emulating old PCs.
But emulation (regardless of whether hardware or software) is not the same experience as real hardware, especially when it comes to PCs. There is the tinkering with hardware, the process of building the PC, the satisfying click of the power button and turbo button, using floppy disks, trying to get it online, etc.
Couldn’t this be done with an FPGA?
Yeah. There’s the ao486 core available on MiSTer.
There’s also the PCem (as well as forks 86Box and PCBox) software emulators which are excellent ways of emulating old PCs.
But emulation (regardless of whether hardware or software) is not the same experience as real hardware, especially when it comes to PCs. There is the tinkering with hardware, the process of building the PC, the satisfying click of the power button and turbo button, using floppy disks, trying to get it online, etc.