Your post shows that if you buy used old equipment you will be depending on the technical support of helpful and sometimes imaginative service people. I have access to a skilled technician that has sometimes successfully solved the type of problems you enumerate - e.g. adapting a relay using a daughter board, fitting capacitors with different terminals, He keeps a few 30 years old Krell's of several friends still working.
BTW, Rowland still manufacture, on demand, modules for their first preamplfiiers and electronics.
As you say the biggest problem are programmable devices such as micro-controllers and laser readout mechanisms. If they fail and the manufacturer can not supply them anymore you have to dump the equipment, Also at some time the price of keeping old equipment working can be too high.