But the hardware company is predatory for not writing a (free?) driver for their obsolete hardware on a new OS? The rest of the world deals with this problem b

But the hardware company is predatory for not writing a (free?) driver for their obsolete hardware on a new OS? The rest of the world deals with this problem by adopting standards. There are plenty of peripheral makers in the PC world who could perfectly well have followed or established standards too and then their equipment might be useful indefinitely through generic, long-lived drivers. In reality many of them chose to use proprietary protocols with no public documentation available instead. Building in artificial obsolescence is certainly a predatory business model.