I was looking at a vintage computer, so yeah that's a possible route. Been using emulators so far but it's not the real thing. Thanks.

I'd say if you have experience with vintage computer then it's probably worthwhile to get one. However just work with an emulator if it's not too exciting to hold a real machine because the cost of maintenance might be pretty high.

I'd second the emulator recommendation. While programming, say, an Apple ][+ can be fun, getting one running maybe not so much. Plus, with an emulator, you'll have the ability to do things like write your code in a modern editor and then paste it over to the emulator rather than trying to work with 8-bit tools. I used to hand-assemble my 6502 code back in the day because I couldn't afford to buy a fancy macro assembler, but I wouldn't recommend writing code in long hand and filling in the hex codes on paper before typing it all in to anyone in 2022.

An intermediate step between real hardware and emulation could be buying the hardware for a MisterFPGA.