When I saw this yesterday, I chose to simply ignore it rather than go down a rabbit hole about something only 3 people in the whole world give a s**t about.
Today however, I'm in a much more confrontational mood.I am not aware of anyone defeating .... I would think we would have heard about that by now and we haven't.
This means you weren't hanging around the right places 
I've been hanging around in ALL of the places Opcode users gathered for years. If you know something I don't, perhaps you would be so kind as to actually explain how to defeat that challenge-response system.
As they say, to each his own. Sometimes the limited number of choices have positive effect on creative process. Yes, Digi was finicky, but what else do you expect when dealing with complex audio hardware. When it was working, it was working and people actually made real music (and money) on those systems.
As to the grungy sound, well, I wouldn't mix any classical project on old PT today, but for some genre that grungy sound might be exactly what the doctor prescribed.
P.S. I don't want to go into discussing technical side of outboard interface quality differences, but want to point out that SDII/AMII combo in a 68k NuBus Mac over SPDIF and coupled with decent outboard A/D and D/A converters is absolutely on par with todays systems when it comes to recording and playback (no processing). Limited to 24bit/48kHz, of course, although I've heard from one reputable source back in the day that it can play back 96kHz over SPDIF.
Well, I
said "personally"… What you describe, while certainly possible, TODAY involves a lot of searching, bug killing, adapting and maintenance to record and playback more than just a few tracks and it all comes crashing down should any of those almost-irreplaceable NuBus cards give you trouble.
"Digi was finicky" is the understatement of the month! I used to do large-screen video service. Many of my clients were post-production studios in Los Angeles. I saw the early SoundTools and ProTools systems first-hand. Those guys had one hand permanently attached to a telephone because they were on the phone with Digi and/or Apple support constantly. So they got the crap straightened out, sometimes made their deadlines and even made money.
You
cannot do that today. There is NO tech support and almost zero documentation for ancient Digidesign product, or Audiomedia or Opcode or anybody else.
That's fine if you're just in it for the fun but you just
cannot operate that way if your life, job, profession or sanity depends on you actually producing stuff. You have got to have a minimum level of reliability and efficiency so you can focus on the product and not be constantly be distracted by and tending to the method.
I have enough backup hardware to probably assemble two more complete OS9 systems. That simply means that if ANY component fails for any reason, I can simply go to the shelf and grab a replacement. That's the only way to reliably operate using long out-of-production hardware built by long-gone companies you can't call on the phone anymore for support.
I've gotten "lost" more than once in the past chasing tech issues and details and mysterious crashes and unexplainable distortions and snaps and buzzes and and and and and…
At some point you make a decision about what you're
really there for. Playing with vintage hardware and software OR making music. If it's music, you must find a level of performance and reliability that allows you to stop being distracted by the engine noises so you can just get on with getting down the road.
I personally do not believe that's possible with 68k systems anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can scour the Earth, spend the rent money on extra parts and actually build some kind of system that will produce what you want it to. Knowing how long it took me to settle in on my OS9 / OSX G4 setup, I shudder to think about chasing after Nubus cards, Magma chassis's almost-nonexistent converters etc. I much prefer to just push the power button and have it all work at least the majority of the time.
