Well yeah, but like a lot of retro computers that have a Pi emulating a modem or a disk drive as a net gateway, you might as well just use the Pi. People do it

Well yeah, but like a lot of retro computers that have a Pi emulating a modem or a disk drive as a net gateway, you might as well just use the Pi. People do it for fun or for the challenge, which is awesome. I don't think anybody on a gateway sitting at their C64 pretends that its viable. I do love reading about that stuff though.