Iain Emms Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 Well then chaps ive just come across the specs I had when I first started simming using Flightsim X. it was a HP Pavillion with killer specs.... Windows XP Intel Pentium processor 940 D. 2gb DDR2 Ram, 200GB Hard Drive Nvidia 7600GS Graphic card. I still use this machine as my work horse connected to the net but its got bigger drives and Ram and a better Graphic card. It must be ten years old now I cant believe I used this for my simming machine for around two years with a 17 inch monitor as well. I then moved up to a better machine for a year or two then again moved up to a Asus Rampage mother board and 6GB of patriot Ram and a couple of Velicaraptor drives with a Nvidia GTX 48O card. Now I have my machine the specs are listed below in my sig, on Friday this week I will have a new Dell 27 inch 4K IPS Monitor to finish it off it just goes to show how things move on. cheers Iain 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickel Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 I was trying to remember what my first FSX machine was last week, for some reason. I think it ran at a whole 1.8GHz on XP, which was pretty quick at the time (but not really quick enough). I didn't discover add ons until the next machine, running 32b Vista at 2.4GHz. No idea what the graphics card is. Like you, it has remained my 'other' machine since being demoted. It's ~12 years old now. Still, 'my' first FS machine was a Commodore 64. For those too young to know, that had 64k (yes, sixty four kilobytes) of RAM. I think the 5 1/2in floppies held 640kb. Some started with a Vic 20, which I think had 4k, or a lofty C16. Seconds per frame was the order of the day. But there was some good stuff on a C64 - anything by Microprose/Sid Meier. Software was horrendously expensive where I grew up. P3D Pro, inflation and capability adjusted, is a steal by comparison. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vora Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 The first was a C64 with 64 KB RAM with FS II, then an Amiga 2000 with 2 MB. None of them had a hard disk The first PC was a 386 with 33 MHz and a whopping 4 MB of RAM for FS 4. And a hard disk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Colin M Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 Mine was an Amiga 500 with 512k, Yes K ram that I upgraded to a heady 1mb ram, 2 floppy drives, True. Had FS2 on this. Then bought my first PC a 386DX 33 MHz, 4MB ram, 40mb HD, Tseng graphic card, then got serious and built my first PC a 486DX2 66MHz still on 4MB ram but a massive 80mb Yes MB HD, both these ran on DOS 5 that I updated to Dos 6.22, Windows 3.0 a bit later. FS4 was my first civie sim on the PC and had every version since. Those 2 PC's were state of the art back then too, LOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rongor Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 I did my first legs on MS FS 3 on a Commodore PC 386SX-16. 16 MHz, 4 MB Extended Memory but only 640k for FS. FS3 was installed on a 42 MB hard disk drive. Chicago was some white lines, the river and green land adjacent to the blue Lake Michigan. Together with those few 3D buildings the visuals were sufficient to make my brain whispering to me "You are flying..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hardmanrb Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 My first was an IBM PcJr. which was an 8088 running at a whopping 4.77MHZ. I came with 128 KB memory and it only had one 360k 5.25 floppy drive. Operating system was DOS 2.1 and flight sim was Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper31 Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 My first flying was on a C64 with FSII and those awesome paper maps that came with it. I loved those old paper maps, which there were four of for those that need a reminder (it was a long time ago haha): New York region, Seattle region, San Francisco region and the Chicago region. I would spend as much time studying those maps to pick airports to fly to as I would actual sim flying. I love maps and land navigation...give me a compass, protractor and a good map and I can navigate just about anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Kane Posted June 11, 2017 Share Posted June 11, 2017 (edited) My first one was the Apple 2e with Sublogic Flight Simulator 1 and 2, my first upgrade was to an IBM 8086 processor with no hardrive, just loaded off the floppy, this one you could use MSFS 2 and 3. My 80386 was the one that really opened up this hobby with MSFS4 and the first aircraft and scenery designers meant we could make our own creations, also the first time using digital sound. This was the beginning of what we have today The 80486 generation was a lot of fun with MSFS 5.1 and the first time seeing photo generated scenery, it just kept on getting better Edited June 11, 2017 by Matthew Kane 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vora Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Looks like Iain is the junior here ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurizio Giorgi Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Even if i started with the Commodore 64, it was Commodore Amiga 500 with 2 floppy drives, HD 40 MB, and 3 MB RAM expanded. I had all the flight simulators games, included all the jet military simulators (these things belong to the 80's because today no more great simulators like those, in despite of today hardware would allow really great games of this genre). Still working 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripcord Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Maurizio I also started with this. Remember the tape drive? It would take like 15 - 20 minutes to load a game... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripcord Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Mr Emms, you should have posted your specs here in one of the posts -- maybe in another ten years we'll all look back again on this thread and laugh at TODAY'S hardware specs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walterg74 Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, Maurizio Giorgi said: Even if i started with the Commodore 64, it was Commodore Amiga 500 with 2 floppy drives, HD 40 MB, and 3 MB RAM expanded. I had all the flight simulators games, included all the jet military simulators (these things belong to the 80's because today no more great simulators like those, in despite of today hardware would allow really great games of this genre). Still working What do you mean? There are great jet/combat sims, like DCS World for example. Edit: besides having played them originally, I also collect them now. I have an Amiga 1000, and a 500, 500+, 600 and 1200. And that's just Amiga of course Edited June 12, 2017 by walterg74 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shortspecialbus Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 My first flightsim PC was a 286, I think the CPU was something like 2/4/6mhz switchable via a software command (you had to use the lowest one to play Defender because it was a .com file and so didn't use timing at all), with a 20MB hard drive that we used Stacker 2.0 on. EGA graphics. Played MSFS 3.3 and Sublogic ATP on that so much. -stefan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greggy_D Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 22 hours ago, Vora said: The first was a C64 with 64 KB RAM with FS II Same here. 1985 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lixfeldt Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 My god there are some old guys here. Mine started in 1993 with a 386dx40 with 350 MB HD and a monster 18 inch viewsonic monitor that run me 800 bucks. The whole system was over 2700 bucks at a computer show in Pomona, CA. It was DOS system, but I used Norton Commander to make things easy. Anyways I bought Ms flight simulator v4 on floppy disks to go along with wolf 3d and Doom. I was in heaven Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alcliff Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 (edited) 47 minutes ago, Greggy_D said: 23 hours ago, Vora said: The first was a C64 with 64 KB RAM with FS II Same here. 1985 Same here. Still working.... Edited June 12, 2017 by alcliff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sightseer Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 1 hour ago, shortspecialbus said: My first flightsim PC was a 286, I think the CPU was something like 2/4/6mhz switchable via a software command (you had to use the lowest one to play Defender because it was a .com file and so didn't use timing at all), with a 20MB hard drive that we used Stacker 2.0 on. EGA graphics. Played MSFS 3.3 and Sublogic ATP on that so much. -stefan my first PC was a 286 also. It had the 'Turbo' button that machines used to have. Im not sure what version of DOS I ran but it was before Windows existed. The first computer I played flightsim on was my brothers. It was 8086 with no hard drive and 4 meg of ram I think. I remember that we would play some games on that that were written in Turbo Pascal and when I tried to play them on my 286, they were just a blur they went so fast. and now we cant get machines fast enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meerkat Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 My first was a Commodore Plus/4 with 64 kb RAM, a datasette drive and a B/W TV as monitor. It was back in 1988, I was in the army (east german air force, that is) and we were playing ACE where you flew a fighter jet and could even simulate aerial refuelling. Then, in 1990 I got an Amiga 500 where I was fascinated by the realism of FS 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurizio Giorgi Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 @Ripcord Yes, i remember that! In many cases you had to adjust the head alignement of the tape with a screwdriver to load the program, it wasn't reliable at all. then i bought a floppy drive for the C 64, anyway it was enormous ahahahah I had card device that allowed to freeze the program already loaded and save it into the floppy drive. This meant random access instead of serial access, much more fast and direct access to the parts of the game (sometimes you had to rewind or forward the tape to load further parts of the game). @walterg74 i have DCS world, anyway that 80's was the period of the cold war and i had a lot of fun with all those Jet Simulators. I played very few with DCS, maybe i should look at it better, but it didn't catch me a lot Anyway other age now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmiG Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 (edited) 6 hours ago, Maurizio Giorgi said: Even if i started with the Commodore 64, it was Commodore Amiga 500 with 2 floppy drives, HD 40 MB, and 3 MB RAM expanded. I had all the flight simulators games, included all the jet military simulators (these things belong to the 80's because today no more great simulators like those, in despite of today hardware would allow really great games of this genre). Still working I actually fired up the old Amiga 500 when I was visiting my parents at the old place last Christmas. Surprisingly it worked just fine, even the 40 MB HDD (just like the side cart in the photo), though it was noisier than I remembered (or maybe it was actually making more noise due to the age and not having been powered on for about 20 years). I also had an Amiga 1200, but I didn't really get into simming until Flight Unlimited II on the PC, around 1997. Edited June 12, 2017 by JimmiG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Dodger Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Great topic Iain. I started out with a 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1982, yes 48k ! The programme was Flight Simulation by Psion and had to be loaded up from a cassette. Took forever to load and, if I remember correctly, I had to use a special cassette player. The simulator was an advanced piece of software at the time !! Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReZ13 Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 I also started out in 1982 with the ZX Spectrum....my first flight sim was Protek Airliner..see pics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kilby Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Oh the memories Protek Airliner..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper31 Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 9 hours ago, Ripcord said: Maurizio I also started with this. Remember the tape drive? It would take like 15 - 20 minutes to load a game... Man O man, that stupid old tape drive...haha... I had one of those for my Commodore Vic 20. Way I remember it, that tape drive took like an hour and a half to load up games. I never had a flight sim program for my Vic 20 though, mostly just those old text adventure games. What a relic that thing was. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete H Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Can't even remember mine. It was a hand-me-down from my Dad, and old Windows 95 machine that I used to run FS98 on as a kid. Had a big old CRT monitor, made of that horrible yellowy plastic! I then "progressed" to a Compaq Presario laptop, with Windows ME and FS98. Then it was onto a Dell Dimension Windows XP machine with FS2004. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aussie123 Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 Memories..... I bought my first computer in Footsgray, Melbourne during 1977. It was a Tandy TRS-80 (Mk1) It was physically the first Computer that the Tandy store had sold (I requested they get it in) so I had to show the shop assistants what it did. (I had done my research) They wanted to see what it did so I set it up in the shop. I may have had the first personal computer in Australia (definitely Victoria) I told them to keep bringing computers in because I could see many people wanting a computer in their home. I don't think they believed me and thought only nerds would want a personal computer in the home. It had 4K of memory. A year later I bought the chips to upgrade it to 16K (A week's wages) Bruce Artwick of Sublogic brought out Flight Simulator for the TRS80 in 1980 so naturally, I bought that program on cassette. The entire screen resolution of the "Trash 80" was 128 x 48 so you had to use your imagination. By 1982 I had purchased one if the first 8088 IBM clone PC. (I avoided the Apple machines) Microsoft bought out the Sublogic company and produced MSFS 1.0 which I bought. I have had every version of MS Sim since then. The PCs where IBM 8088, 286, 386, 486 and every flavour after that. I have, this month, just purchased P3DV4. My first sim other than Microsoft. Quite a journey. Aussie123 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shortspecialbus Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 I did have a TRS CoCo2 but I never had flightsim on it. All the talk of magnetic tape drives brings me back. I learned programming on that thing when I was a kid. I can't imagine I even remember how to write "Extended Color Basic" any more. -stefan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Kane Posted June 12, 2017 Share Posted June 12, 2017 2 hours ago, Sniper31 said: Man O man, that stupid old tape drive...haha... I had one of those for my Commodore Vic 20. Way I remember it, that tape drive took like an hour and a half to load up games. I never had a flight sim program for my Vic 20 though, mostly just those old text adventure games. What a relic that thing was. We had the Vic 20s at school. Artillery was the best game ever Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 On 6/11/2017 at 0:19 PM, Colin M said: Mine was an Amiga 500 with 512k, Yes K ram that I upgraded to a heady 1mb ram, 2 floppy drives, True. Had FS2 on this. This ^^^^^ Me too! It's like Moore's Law of flight sims! The more powerful the software the more powerful the hardware required! It never ends. Or will it when we all have Quantum computers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1bmsgt Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 On 6/11/2017 at 2:26 PM, Sniper31 said: My first flying was on a C64 with FSII and those awesome paper maps that came with it. I loved those old paper maps, which there were four of for those that need a reminder (it was a long time ago haha): New York region, Seattle region, San Francisco region and the Chicago region. I would spend as much time studying those maps to pick airports to fly to as I would actual sim flying. I love maps and land navigation...give me a compass, protractor and a good map and I can navigate just about anywhere. You mean like this one?? Russ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 I loved those paper maps, had the same exact ones! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1bmsgt Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 (edited) 8 minutes ago, Jack Sawyer said: I loved those paper maps, had the same exact ones! I took that pic at Flightsimcon yesterday, although I owned FSII for my C64 back in the day and had all the charts. Every so often I kick myself for getting rid of it... My first Flight Sim was also the Psion Flight Simulator on a Timex/Sinclair 1000 in 1982, which I believe was the same thing as the Z-80. Russ Edited June 13, 2017 by b1bmsgt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper31 Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 13 minutes ago, b1bmsgt said: You mean like this one?? Russ YES!! Those are the ones! Man, that is nostalgia right there. Looks just like I remember Thanks for that wonderful trip down memory lane Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1bmsgt Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 1 minute ago, Sniper31 said: YES!! Those are the ones! Man, that is nostalgia right there. Looks just like I remember Thanks for that wonderful trip down memory lane Russ My pleasure! How about this: 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper31 Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 Wow! Just wow! That subLOGIC box alone is enough for the price of admission...and look at that giant AC adapter behind the monitor! Man, those bricks used to get so hot. Very cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1bmsgt Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 You should make the trip to Flightsimcon next year. They'll probably have it there again, not to mention all the other cool stuff. Nerd heaven! Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jalbrech Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 19 minutes ago, b1bmsgt said: I took that pic at Flightsimcon yesterday, although I owned FSII for my C64 back in the day and had all the charts. Every so often I kick myself for getting rid of it... My first Flight Sim was also the Psion Flight Simulator on a Timex/Sinclair 1000 in 1982, which I believe was the same thing as the Z-80. Russ My First machine ever. 64 K RAM (with the add on piece on back). Memories! My first flight sim was FS1 on a 386 with 4 MB ram and a 20 MB Hard Drive. It ran off a floppy. Things have moved a bit in the past few years! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jalbrech Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 1 minute ago, jalbrech said: My First machine ever. 64 K RAM (with the add on piece on back). Memories! My first flight sim was FS1 on a 386 with 4 MB ram and a 20 MB Hard Drive. It ran off a floppy. Things have moved a bit in the past few years! Whoops, The Timex Sinclair had 4 K RAM internal and the block in the back boosted it to 16 K. Whoo hoo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1bmsgt Posted June 13, 2017 Share Posted June 13, 2017 1 minute ago, jalbrech said: Whoops, The Timex Sinclair had 4 K RAM internal and the block in the back boosted it to 16 K. Whoo hoo! I was just going to say that!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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