How do devs maintain old projects? - node.js

Question

A year ago I've made a project for a course: https://github.com/GeorgeFlorian/Finished_link_project
Now, I am trying to make it work on my machine, but I have no luck.
I've got npm 7.13.0 and node 16.1.0.
I've ran npm update in order to update all the depencies.
Steps
I've cloned the repo into a PC than runs Linux Mint 20.1
I've ran npm install
npm update
npm run build and npm run serve return the same error:
georgeflorian#georgeflorian-desktop:~/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project$ npm run build
> proiect-link#0.1.0 build
> vue-cli-service build
⠧ Building for production...
ERROR Failed to compile with 1 error 2:55:41 PM
Syntax Error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'parseComponent' of undefined
You may use special comments to disable some warnings.
Use // eslint-disable-next-line to ignore the next line.
Use /* eslint-disable */ to ignore all warnings in a file.
ERROR Build failed with errors.
I have no idea how to trace the error: Syntax Error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'parseComponent' of undefined.
Also, the NodeJS server won't start:
georgeflorian#georgeflorian-desktop:~/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/server$ node app.js
node:internal/fs/utils:343
throw err;
^
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/home/georgeflorian/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/dist/favicon.ico'
at Object.statSync (node:fs:1527:3)
at resolveSync (/home/georgeflorian/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/node_modules/serve-favicon/index.js:187:17)
at favicon (/home/georgeflorian/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/node_modules/serve-favicon/index.js:61:12)
at Object.<anonymous> (/home/georgeflorian/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/server/app.js:46:9)
at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1109:14)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1138:10)
at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:989:32)
at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:829:14)
at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:76:12)
at node:internal/main/run_main_module:17:47 {
errno: -2,
syscall: 'stat',
code: 'ENOENT',
path: '/home/georgeflorian/New Volume/VSCode Projects/Finished_link_project/dist/favicon.ico'
}
I believe that many dependencies are deprecated, but this begs two questions:
If it worked back then and it hasn't been touched since, why doesn't it work now ?
How can I fix all the deprecated dependencies if npm update did not fix them ?
Ultimately, I would like to learn how to approach this kind of situation. Thank you.