I wonder if anyone makes a virtual floppy drive that replicates the performance characteristics. I.e. to avoid a faster virtual drive uncovering dormant race conditions. Something like a developer assuming "I have enough time to do this processing before the disc makes another rotation" etc.
I think any of the "off the shelf" gotek emulators should suffice for this. They're made for people to keep playing games on old hardware. I would assume copy protection and other shenanigans would be the creme de la creme of abusing the hardware.
This is to get rid of the media only. You'll still be using the original compute hardware. But it would be an interesting step.
I feel that most of the desire to upgrade is cultural and not technical. People love to talk about the floppies being used while its just a small part of the equation. Cost and risk of creating a new system with the same reliability expectations is hard when the incumbent has decades of iteration. For systems that do not require more performance or energy efficiency the accounting on upgrading looks very different.
