[Simh] SIMH and physical hardware

[Zachary Kline]

This is around 50% humorous, but it’s still a thing I’ve been thinking about lately. From a newbie’s perspective, all SIMH machines are very similar. The worst thing about emulation is that the “feel,” of the original hardware doesn’t seem to be there. Simh can emulate tons of hardware from different manufacturers, but none of that will tell me what it was like to actually use the devices in a physical sense.
As a blind user, I’m doubly interested in this kind of physicality because I experience the world through touch and sound. I have little conception of the shape or size of many of these notional machines, and they are all reduced to various abstractions at a console prompt. It’s hard to imagine a thing I was far too young to experience.
I was reminded of an Apple II emulator I saw once, sadly not accessible, which made the appropriate disk drive noises in use. Its kind of useless from a  practical standpoint, but a lot of my interest in these machines isn’t practical to begin with. I want to explore an earlier kind of computing, but don’t expect to get a job with it or have anything beyond some entertainment. 
I really don’t know what, if anything, can be done to bridge this weird disconnect. Actual hardware is probably gradually fading out, and in any case probably wouldn’t be accessible from my perspective anyway.

Any thoughts? Apologies for the disjointed post, it’s rather late. ;)