yeah for commercial use they are junk due to NB, but amatuer they are still a solid radio. my comment about the osc is meant only to show that the cost to use them at most another 20 months is not worth it, but since they are good for years it is worth it for amatuer use. you can usually warp the old crystal in up until they get to either -4khz off or so unstable they won't stay on freq more than a few minutes after warping. if it is off to the + side, it is NOT due to an old crystal, as the crystal grows it always shifts negative, so you can usually warp them in or just replace a cap. once set they generally hold within +/-100 hz, usually less than 10hz!
as to the software, the maxtrac RSS has a feature most don't that allows you to adjust the speed it communicates/times out and this lets it work on most any DOS based machine no matter how new/old it is.