I disagree. Things that made sense on a tiny machine, like the original 8086's wraparound at 1 MB led to hacks like the A20 gate [1]. Or timing loops that were dependent on a processor running at 4.77 mhz, requiring things like the turbo button. Compatibility is a balancing game, because you end up needing to keep bugs lying around that otherwise would be fixed at some point in a newer architecture. I'm more of the opinion that we're much better off explicitly emulating those areas, so they are run in their own context and it's a lot easier to mitigate damage. While compatibility is a positive thing, improvement is a much more positive thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A20_line#A20_gate