Posted the below in community Hall, but thought it worthwhile to post it here, as well:

Just yesterday I was rummaging around on the Interwebs, looking for mods/patches for "Jane's WW 2 Fighters", yet another "orphan" game I own, but have enjoyed playing in the past. It is reminiscent of EAW.

Well, I found a few sites that were supposed to have a gold-mine of add-ons, patches, and Mods, but naturally, the links led to sites that were all long ago extinct.

Using the dead links, I consulted the "Wayback Machine", properly known as internet archive,org. I typed in some of the dead links, and lo and behold, the long-dead sites were there. Not only that, but the whole site, including any linked material that was stored on that site. I just had to backtrack in time to a point just before the site went dead to get the info that I wanted.

Turns out one can "search" internet archive, and it will possibly yield the site you are looking for. Searching for "Jane's WW II Fighters" gave scant results, but searching for "Jane's WW 2 Fighters" struck gold.

I can't believe I didn't think of this before. I'll bet that someone sharper than me has thought of it, though.

Submitted for your consideration.

Excellent

Love the Way Back machine.

It's another tool for the archeologist. Most of the time one is digging in the wrong places, and with no useful result. Occasionally, one gets lucky (after a lot of preliminary work) and the vein of gold is revealed.

I went though 99% of the eaw sites on that service already, saved notes, used notes, added to my help web site. Most of the old info I found on a handful of locations where of value.

If you find something useful, I'll be happy to look at for inclusion on my site

You can always attempt to be proactive with the Internet Archive too.




Wheels

As I said, I knew that others had been there before.

Had nothing to do with who was first I just wanted to remind everyone that you can save pages too. That way you have a better chance of finding something that was "lost" at later date.


Wheels

thanks for the info! Not sure how this is an improvement over finding what one wants on the wayback machine, and then installing that web address (via wayback) into one's favorites. Maybe I'm missing something. Please explain.

You can't find something at the Internet Archive if it isn't already there. By using their Save Page Now feature you create you own reference points for a site.


Wheels

So, this is a way of directing/requesting the Wayback machine to crawl the directed/requested site?

Yes, but unfortunately it will only crawl the page you put in the Save Page Now box and not the entire site. If you want to save multiple pages you will need to do them one at a time.

This article may help explain it better?
If You See Something, Save Something – 6 Ways to Save Pages In the Wayback Machine: https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save-something/

Another thing that works is to save the first page using the Save Page Now feature and then continue to click on links in the page saved by the wayback machine. If the link has not been saved the wayback machine will pop up a dialogue box letting you know and ask you if you want to save it to the archive.


Wheels

I understand better, now. Thanks for the info, and the very useful link.

I did a search for Janes WW2 fighters, EAW and CFS-2 and was able to download installation ISO files from a site in Wales named FIREDROP:

https://firedrop.com/6dd19e96be7ac31f4cec186e1a784db3

The downloads came as 7-zip "*.7z" files, and extracting the contents gave me folders with the ISO files in them.
However, attempting to mount them, or read them with programs able to read ISO files, gave the same result- the ISO files are corrupted
Clone CD did not report any errors, but the CDs it made appeared to contain no readable data.

Jel

Just sent you a PM with some extremely interesting links. Please don't delete it when cleaning-out your currently full PM hopper

Am I correct in assuming you were looking for downloadable versions of the abovementioned games? If so, I will remember that during my searches of the interweb. Ironic that I have all 3 games, store-bought, and in boxes with all the manuals, keyboard layouts, and so forth. The link I sent to you about JWW2F has all that (except for the game itself--2 CDs, originally), plus several tons more.

I have made some progress today
With info received in a PM, plus a bit of searching I have a good version of Janes WW2 fighters running in Win 10 via the d3d windower, and MS Flight simulator 1, which runs in its own window with full screen option.
One interesting point is that I cannot find a no-CD crack for MS Flight simulator 1, but I do not need one.
Win 10 allows me to mount the ISO file for CD1 on a virtual drive, which I have done, and the game runs well without the actual CD in the DVD drive.
I must check this in Win 7 and see how it goes there

Man I have forgotten more information from old flight sim games over the last 25+ years than I can ever hope to remember key words and phrases from games in the small hope that I might find them on the site you guys linked. It is a wonderful place to go digging around and it makes me remember how much time and money I have spent over the years as well...dammit.

JWW2F runs well on Win 7; Don't recall ever needing a wrapper on Win7. I strongly suggest investigating the links I sent you to find the "Suggested Mods" (might not be that exact phrase, and not easy to find) for JWW2F, and installing them once the basic game is up and running in a stable manner.

With the suggested Mods, JWW2F is very nice.

I have WW II fighters running great on Win 7 64 bit using nglide..I have a bunch of mods from the old MODS cd just haven't added them in,,And have FS1 running with the cd in Just had to add a fix for joystick troubles