I did my initial course with AA at DFW in 1979 and I still have the manual:
I flew that sim about 1999 for Gemini. It was suspended in a huge steel cage - the cylinders were on the top of the box. It held (I believe) 8 people. Looked like a Winnebago hanging there in the semi-darkness, over pools of leaking hydraulic fluid....
I am, indeed, very very lucky. My father was in the initial cadre at Northwest on the DC-10 as a young flight engineer, must have been about 1970. He gave me his study panels after he graduated, and I hung them on my wall - black and white drawings of the FE panel and the front instrument panel. I would sit in front of them and pretend. Now I fly them - but of course, the FE panel has been replaced by a window.....