The day when my Amiga PCMIA slot broke (well, 2 pins fell out) I was devastated. No longer could I use the 8x CD-ROM that plugged in there with the SCSI interface. Litreally gigabytes of data were lost that day, as I couldn't access my AF and CU and AmigActive collections.
Until along came WinUAE. The latest version (something like 0.8.22 or something) allowed me to set up a proper Amiga hard drive with ease, get Workbench 3 running (until I transfer the 3.1 ROM using TransROM) and get some lovely games working.
Then, after a couple of days of head scratching, I've learnt how to make the emulated Amiga find the PC CD-ROM. My Amiga CD-ROm collection is back in usage...running the T-Zero demo faster than my A1200 '030/50 :-o
The moral of this tale? Don't criticise WinUAE. It may be a godsend if one of your PCMIA pins starts to look a bit loose and you think "I'll just adjust that with this screwdriver..." :-o