We’ve come a long way… 
EDIT: Should have said really, this link goes to browser versions of the classic FS1 (1982) to FS4 (1989):
https://s-macke.github.io/FSHistory/
vs
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That’s the version I started on, with a…PC Jr! LOL
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Our phones today have dozens (or even hundreds) of times more computing power than the Cray supercomputers that my friends and I used to oggle at in magazines when we were kids (we were nerds). Those supercomputers were used for serious computing. We use the unimaginable power of our phones for social media and games…
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Yup. It’s my very shameful understanding that we as humans degenerated (at least) as fast as the computing power was/is rising up. Modern times. It’s like it is.
I crashed many times on that Atari 800 and Flight Simulator II.
The first thing i purchased when a got a PC clone was Flight Simulator 3
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@notsofearless Was about to post the same link!
Good job by and the dev who built it 
Darn no sound! 
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Ah but a very important question, which model of PC was your first one? Mine was the “poor mans” 486, the 386-DX40 
I never had the Atari 800, had the ST and the STe, then the mighty Amiga until the PC came along.
PS In your photo of the Atari 800, seems computers and monitors have change a lot but not so much lamps
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I actually managed to land on FS2, 3 and 4. Took me 3-4 go arounds though. was fun. FS1 has a strange control scheme that does not match the description, so i gave up.
I also had a generic AMD 386DX-40 as my first PC circa 1991, running DOS 6.something and Win3.0 (later upgraded to Win3.1). Didn’t do any flight simming on that machine - most of my gaming was stuff like SimCity, SimEarth, etc.
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My first FS was FS2 on the blazingly “fast” Commodore 64. Took about 8-10 minutes to load on the 1541 floppy disk drive.
Oddly enough, sometimes MSFS takes 8-10 minutes to load…lol
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That was underrated spec at the time, did not expect much from it but was pleasantly surprised. I remember my Amiga friends asking why I’d bought a “business computer” 
My first PC was a 286 clone of some sort.
Hurry up and wait faster.
I miss when PC cases had space for the ‘Turboboost’ button. 
As odd as it seems now, games used to use fixed timers rather than wait for what the equivalent of vsync was for the EGA/VGA buffer, so for compatibility you could change the clock speed on your processor using the Turboboost button to make the game timings work again. Good times…
Amused to see that the 1989 MSFS 4.0 had thermal soaring while the 2022 MSFS is still working on it. I know it’s already on the roadmap for the very next Sim Updates but still shows how much work was put into those “rudimentary” flight simulators.
Yes, but you can’t compare the “Thermal Soaring” mode in FS4.0 with the full blown thermals simulation of FS2020. it was verz very rudementary back then …
But indeed for the time, the Programm was a big thing. And this showed when you tried to run it. Nearly no computer was possible to run FS4.0 with decent frame rates … but nevertheless it was a great time and FS3.0 and FS4.0 were my entry in aviation and flight simming…
I started out on a 2K Timex Sinclair computer loading programs with a tape drive. Finally got an Atari 800 and Sublogic Flight Simulator. Went to PCs in 91 and have had every versions of MSFS since. Developed on Flight Sim 2004 for years adding traffic and scenery. I am so amazed how realistic this program has
become. Wonder what MSFS2030 would look like…
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