Hi David my friend,

Theres alot of debate as to whether much hardware is need these days, i think if you have a good mixing technique and know about the hardware in general then the same ideas can be used on plug ins. I think these days there are so many great plug ins that having hardware is not a major concern for alot of people. It can certainly help but not a total must.
If you want some really good mixing tools that are very close to the real thing, then look at Slatedigital.com these tools are VERY GOOD and affordable. Have a look at my youtube review on AudioNRG about these. Further up the chain you can look at Universal Audio, these are awesome but VERY EXPENSIVE.
As for hardware like EQ some of these are pretty cheap second hand, like DBX etc but compressors can be very expensive and you need a few different models to do different things as well as a summer and a Limiter. but Slate has these covered ok in thier plugins, not the real thing but good.
cheers