OT: a fair few people have played IL2 since the beginning...

[choctaw111]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

What, this is the Cliffs of Dover forums combat sim remembrance thread and nobody posted this so far?

This is what I started with. The circle comes to a close

TFH was very good and I enjoyed countless hours on the Amiga...with 1 Meg of ram...a big deal back then.

[AndyJWest]

...the Amiga...with 1 Meg of ram...a big deal back then...

Pah! Another mere newcomer, who doesn't know what real computers were like. The first computer I ever actually got to touch: Acorn Atom "The 12 KB of RAM was divided between 5 KB available for programs, 1 KB for the page zero and 6 KB for the high resolution graphics". The first computer I programmed was a BBC Micro, with an astonishing 32 Kb of RAM...

[mcler002]

I'm so glad i can call myself a rookie, on IL2, now... seems like there is alot of old timers playing this game and have been playing air combat sims for some time

Please feel free to clip me around the head...

XD

[AndyJWest]

Consider yourself 'clipped', mcler002.

Time to see if the Amstrad still works...

[JG52Krupi]

Here we clip wings not heads

[AndyJWest]

Here we go - still got the manual too:

Loading - 'neeeeeee, neeeeeeee, neeeeeeeee'....

5 minutes or so later:

Airborne! The runway is about the only thing that shows up on the ground...

Sadly, the joystick is kaput - not that it was exactly hi-tech anyway, it just imitated 5 different keypresses. I managed to take off ok, but didn't persevere beyond that

And for another nostalgia trip, Jet Set Willy: The Final Frontier

Actually a rather nice platform game - still fun, and still frustrating if your timing is less than perfect.

I'll see if I can load Tomahawk tomorrow. A much more complex sim, with genuine multicolour wireframe graphics!

[b101uk]

good old Jet Set Willy.

[Bryan21cag]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Pah! Another mere newcomer, who doesn't know what real computers were like. The first computer I ever actually got to touch: Acorn Atom "The 12 KB of RAM was divided between 5 KB available for programs, 1 KB for the page zero and 6 KB for the high resolution graphics". The first computer I programmed was a BBC Micro, with an astonishing 32 Kb of RAM...

OK already... we get it......your old.....lol just kidding

WOW video games on cassette???? that's something i had never even heard of Its amazing that you have kept it in such good condition for all these years.
cheers

[AndyJWest]

video games on cassette????

Yup. Quite effective, if rather slow. The Amstrad had the cassette recorder built in, unlike my earlier Sinclair Spectrum. I actually have a 3" (not 3.5") external floppy disc drive for the Amstrad, though it doesn't seem to work any more. That was a real advance for its time. You could get an astonishing 178 Kb of data on each side (they were flippy-floppies )! It even came with CP/M on a disc - a whole new operating system to play with.

I suspect the main reason the Amstrad has survived is that I only really used it for a couple of years or so. My next computer was an Acorn_Archimedes. After that it was boring old Windows machines (with a bit of Ubuntu as well - I was given an 'obsolete' Compaq which is about 10 years old, so I put Ubuntu on it and use it as a web browser sometimes). As you can tell, I'm not very good at throwing things away...

[Bryan21cag]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Yup. As you can tell, I'm not very good at throwing things away...

LOL no sir you are not

but the upside is that when they finally open a classic computers museum (if they have not already) You might stand to make a fortune being the only person to have these old but necessary pieces of computer history in such condition

cheers to you and your collection sir it is one of a kind