I currently have turntables in my house and bought my mom a record player so she could listen to all of her old records. I still find places to go record shopping
Yes, I am young, but considering tech has changed so dramatically in the last decade or two saying I am too young to experience the frustration of a system becoming obsolete is a tad off base. I even shared a story where my programs (that I wrote) where basically locked away on 5 1/4" disks. I don't have any programs that can pull them off, but then again I don't expect the technology to always (easily) provide me with a solution to do so.
Your story has a happier ending than mine. You found someone to do the conversion to ASCII, your work was saved, huzzah!
I understand the concern in wanting to be "future proof", but I just view it as a fairly crippling ideal to hold onto. Technology moves so fast that you either have to adjust or make a nice home for yourself and get left behind.
The latter isn't a bad thing. In fact that's what my mom is doing right now. Her computer plays all of her puzzle games, sudoku, and allows her to mess with the old version of Photoshop that she has (which can save images as .jpg for people on the newer versions. Her computer is 6 years old (I think), and she sees absolutely no reason to upgrade and neither do I. This option is the best one to ensure future proofing as you never have to worry about what the future brings.