I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot, myself. Growing up, I never had access to a c64—we had a pcjr at home and apple 2e at elementary school—but I am, now as an adult, really interested in these types of projects and could easily see myself picking one up.
What intrigued me though is two fold: one, I find myself also remembering my father when I was growing up, he was not interested in computers, they were more or less just a tool to get a job done, but he loved cars. He had a VW beetle, late 50s early 60s model (though they didn’t change much) and he would tear it down, rebuild the engine, do whatever. But I mean honestly, I can’t see much difference between what he was doing then, and what I am doing now (building a home-brew Micro8088). In fact, probably for a lot of the same reasons...
There is something about that era of computing, I can hold a lot what is going on in my head and there are very few abstractions between myself and the machine. The limitations of the architecture inspire creativity and doing things “the wrong way”, but in a way you can gain a more significant understanding of the underlying system. But, part of that is just nostaligia, and I imagine if i could time travel back and have a beer with my dad over his car, he’d probably say something very similar about the lack of fuel injection computers and the simiplicity of a two stroke engine...
And secondly, and this isn’t intended to be a scoff at “millennials”, quite the opppsite actually, I wonder what the current generation will look back on as this level of “things were simpler then”-retrospection. Because I’m sure that my dad never thought that I would look back on the 8088s and z80s of my youth as a manifestation of “simplicity”. So, what am I not seeing about my present?