It is my sad duty to inform you, If I may, that my good, old, glorious and decaying old calcolatore (see specifications in my signature) has entered immortality yesterday. 
[And no, I did not get it from Leonardo Da Vinci, though it may seem likely] 
So long, old pal, will be missing you somehow.
But I'm sure your follower-up will do its best to make me miss you less. 

That kind of closes it up for my FS98 screenies as well, I guess (although you never know).

Hey thats what happens after a while I geuus. Yous hould try to see what broke - if its not oo major then you could replace it and keep it as a back up machine like. Otherwise take out its drives - you can re-use them for endless back ups... and RAID 0 springs to mind!! 
Remeber - Get good, buy once. 

Ah well thats a pity. Just take what you can, and keep anything else for 'later'! You never know 

Quote:

You don't get something for nothing (except for FS freeware downloads.........)

If it were me I would stik it in the oven.... 

Hey FridayChild,

You should igonre the Athlon XPs. They are now rubbish.

The Athlon FX consists only of the FX-55. That is AMD's best CPU. Since you don't have an unlimited budget (as you said) your best bet is an Athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+.

The GeForce 6600GT does indeed come in PCIe, the card was solely intended for it. You will have to buy a Socket 939 processor however. It is a very good value card.

1GB RAM is an excellent choice; it will handle everything you throw at it.

Rob.

Yes, I very much agree with the_autopilot there.

As he said, you should get a DVD Burner, they are very cheap nowadays, and of course you should get an optical mouse.

Also, as the_autopilot suggested, get Windows XP. It's the best OS out with many games optimized for it.

Sound card is optional but I highly recommend it; however, motherboards are now coming out with excellent integrated solutions.

It really is up to you. I think it's best if you buy the individual components and build the PC yourself. Of course, you will need a case, but that's no problem.

I think a 160GB hard drive is enough these days.

I have compiled a list of the components I recommend:

Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NF-9 nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI Express
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 200GB 2000JD SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-013-WD)
RAM: Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB)
Graphics card: Leadtek WinFast PCX6600GT-TDH Extreme Edition GeForce PCX6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express)
Case: Antec Super LANBOY Aluminum Super Mini Tower Case - No PSU (CA-012-AN)
DVD-+RW drive: Sony DWU-23A 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-035-SO)
DVD-ROM and CD-RW Combi: LG GCC-4521BL 52x/32x/52x/16x CD-RW/DVD Combi Drive
Power supply: Akasa Ultra Quiet 460W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU
Keyboard and mouse: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop v2.0 - OEM

Phew! There it is. The complete list. The total price came up to £765.46. Converted into Euros the price is:

€1,113.46

I think it is a good price. You should think about it. Also, it is Parcel Force 48 International Shipping (included in the price).

Hope this has helped,

Rob.

PS. The website where I selected these items is www.overclockers.co.uk

Those specs wouldn't even hold the "aircraft" folder in my FS9 directory, let alone the whole game!!!