While not as old as your 286, I support a white box Windows 98 PC hooked up to some brand-name lab equipment. The lab equipment maker is still around but no longer supports this particular piece of equipment.
The PC itself is pretty archaic. It doesn't have USB or networking capability, so when the researchers want to send data to colleagues, I have to pull the hard drive and hook it up as a D: drive in an old Optiplex that uses PATA connections. From the Optiplex, I move it to the lab folder on the server, and they can send it wherever they need to.
The PC is only used on occasion and spends most of its time turned off.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
