Blast from the past indeed! I ve toyed around with it, Ogre3D and others, finally setting down on P3D. Over a decade ago I maintained unofficial Panda3D Facebook page, and had page analytics track followers count again Ogre3D and Irrlicht Engine pages, trying to surpass them..
As someone who often sees personal collections scathered around in the dust of flea markets, I would say there is nothing you can actually do to be safe. Even if your kids preserve it, their kids will _pay_ local gypsies to take it all away so they can renovate the houses and flats. From there it's as good as trash.
The story part is exactly what I appreciate though. The recipe, on most modern sites, is kinda separated, usually at the bottom, and often printable, anyway.
Depends on what hardware, who is developing it, and for who. Proof of concept is almost always cheap enough to make. Beauty of HW is that you get PMF straight away - even if you have the worst completely broken product, but it it brings value to someone, they will pay for it. From there you can bootstrap, take on credit etc. Capital intense part can wait - refinement, certifications, patents, packaging, documentation, mass production etc. This is of course all under assumption that the core team knows how to build everything, if you're outsourcing in the prototype phase then you're probably toast anyway.
> So the right kind of investor could add significant value if they were aligned.
I always perceived value of investors to be everything but the money. If you need just the money then get a loan.