A few minutes longer than they currently do, obviously.

Other way around. Theora was apparently released in 2004. H.264 (according to Wikipedia), was formally approved in March 2003, but it had already been worked on since at least 2000.

You must be new here.

For the motherboard controllers, they keep the same controller chip. Removing the support from the chip would require designing, verifying, validating, debugging new silicon which has no value. To save cost, they'll remove the connectors and change the BIOS so that the devices don't show up.

Higher end motherboards and workstation class PC's seem to support more legacy hardware interfaces than mainstream ones. My Dell Precision Workstation (2 dual core xeon's) has 2 serial ports, a parallel port, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, something like 8 USB 2.0's and Firewire 800.

For software, there are better alternatives:

Real-mode DOS or Full-screen DOS: FreeDOS or MS-DOS in a VirtualPC. Or DOSBox is great for a lot of stuff.
Qbasic: Visual Studio Express Edition

Most MUDs are also CRPG's with levels, equipment, quests/missions, et cetera. Little to no puzzle solving necessary. Thus they share more in common with World of Warcraft than they do with adventure games.

Survival horror games (e.g., Resident Evil, Silent Hill, et cetera) even though they have a lot of first person or third person shooter characteristics actually have more in common with adventure games because of the perpetual "find key to open door and advance storyline" situation.