EB showing its age?

trains2 · Post by **trains2** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 11:23 pm

http://www.europeanbahn.co.uk/Lsc_Info.htm

The bit I particularly like is:

Back in 1992 we released "London Brighton Express",

Although I must say the working Gatwick is rather good.

Rich

3DTrains · Post by **3DTrains** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 11:47 pm

Wow - these guys are good! Not only did they have the first addon for MSTS, they also had an addon that apparently ran on Win 3.1!

Cheers!
Marc - 3DTrains
http://www.3dtrains.com

jamiebowey87 · Post by **jamiebowey87** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:16 am

Together with ground breaking customer service on their forums!

117305 · Post by **117305** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 1:13 am

how did they get an add on out for a game that was no in the shops then,did they have a pre relise copy

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:11 am

Well its strange, but i was talking to someone the other day and remarked i had bought my copy of MSTS in the early 1990's and he said that it wasnt possible either as it wasn't realised until 2001 or something. Now im sure I was right - although of course i cant prove it now, and it was EB's LBE which got me really interested in the game /sim.

Now i bought my copy by mail order from the USA and paid Â£70 for it ( again everyone tells me that it was never that price ) - so im wondering if maybe it was on sale earlier than most people think - or am i suffering senile something or other too

But you are right - of course - that bought before 1995 / 1996 it would have been running on W3.1 which im pretty sure it wasn't. Im fairly sure though i did have it running on W95 but i'll need to dig the old PC out of storage and boot it up to check - if i can be bothered.

Or maybe we've both lost 10 years of our lives somewhere

Anyway its still a great add-on and in my top 5 after all this time. I'll probably buy the combined version - if only to see if I can make all my old activities for LBE work on the new version

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:19 am

Maybe he's thinking of Brighton Belle on the Speccy.

Back in 1992 most PC's were still 386's with about 2Mb of RAM. Closest most people got to a home PC was buying a Commodore Amiga 500/600/1200 and connecting it to the TV.

Actually I think the A1200 came out towards the end of '93 and the upgrade over the A600 at the time was astonishing!

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 7:23 am

Yes - Ive just looked back at my uploads (dont know why i didnt think to do that first

) and my first upload ever to this site was August 2003. That makes sense as it would have meant i bought the add-on early in 2003. As i didnt play MSTS much until LBE came out I may well have bought MSTS in 2002 or possibly 2001, and i have to conclude that i have in fact lost 10 years of my life somewhere.

If anyone finds it can you give it back to me please

Back in 1992 most PC's were still 386's with about 2Mb of RAM

Ive still got my first PC. An Amstrad 3386SX running at the amazing clock speed of 20 Mhz ( all others on sale at that time had a top speed of 8Mhz ) - its got the basic 1Mb of memory (of which only 640K was usable under Dos 3.30) and a whopping 256K Hard Disk.

Would anyone like to try a guess at how much I paid for that setup

peterholton · Post by **peterholton** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:06 am

Â£800 - ish.

I seem to have paid Â£800 - ish for every "personal computer" since my first TRS-80 in 1978.

Peter

*edit* Which means I've probably spent over Â£14000 over the years on computer hardware alone. Ouch.

TOMMO79 · Post by **TOMMO79** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 9:45 am

EB showing its age?

Nah! EB showing its stupidity

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:08 am

Â£800 - ish.

No - i wish it had been that cheap - not even in the same ballpark

XPTE · Post by **XPTE** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 11:23 am

I do know that back in 1996, the average price of PC's was about Â£1600. And only had about 5GB hard drives.

I didn't get my first PC until 2001 when they were more sensibly priced at Â£599.99. Though before this I had a ZX81, Mattel Aquarius, Amstrad CPC 464, and Commodore Amiga A500+. Ah those were the days.

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:44 pm

The average price of a decent gaming PC has always been around Â£1000 - Â£1100 so I guess in real terms the cost has come down. Quite noticeable walking round places like PC World or Comet (not that I would ever buy a PC in there), the mutton dressed as lamb they are trying to sell in the Â£700 - Â£800 range. They look good on the surface but on closer investigation find they are some obscure AMD chip with no clue as to the CPU speed or have built in video card and/or sound card on the motherboard.

My current PC is now 4 years old and working really well. Loath to get rid of it really as it's got all the bits I need only drawback is the CPU (2.4 Ghz Pentium) can't be upgraded without a new motherboard and not sure how the rest of the system might take to that.

lateagain · Post by **lateagain** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 1:02 pm

bigvern wrote:Maybe he's thinking of Brighton Belle on the Speccy.

Back in 1992 most PC's were still 386's with about 2Mb of RAM. Closest most people got to a home PC was buying a Commodore Amiga 500/600/1200 and connecting it to the TV.

Actually I think the A1200 came out towards the end of '93 and the upgrade over the A600 at the time was astonishing!

I distinctly remember that the boot screen on the speccy said 1983.

I'paid well over a Â£100 for a 4Mb memory card for my Amiga 1200 and had a 2Mb PMCIA card for the slot too. Can't remember what they had "on board" and the hard disc is probably available in compact flash sizes nowadays!

but I do remember Brighton Belle and even an East coast mainline that was just a black screen with some signals along a white line and written reports of your progress. I remember thinking wouldn't it be great if the train went through a virtual world like the ones that military flight sims used that were shown on TV supported by a main frame that wouldn't have fitted into a Transit Van! If only....

WaltTFB · Post by **WaltTFB** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:09 pm

Never had Southern Belle on the Spectrum, did spend a lot of time playing Evening Star though.

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rwaceyw · Post by **rwaceyw** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:12 pm

jamiebowey87 wrote:Together with ground breaking customer service on their forums!

Surely you said that in jest?

David