I doubt interfacing with 80 year old lab equipment is the target market for this board. Though I can see supporting the existing shields and interface being a

I doubt interfacing with 80 year old lab equipment is the target market for this board. Though I can see supporting the existing shields and interface being a design goal. But there's already a lot of ESP32s in use today using a variety of methods to interface to 5v devices without including a whole other microcontroller.