Elite II and older has been freeware for quite a while. FFE was just made freeware a year or 2 ago. Jades.org has a link to the site of the company that made them, and they are listed as freeware now. As far as I know, all PC versions of Elite, Elite II, and FFE are now freeware, NOT abandonware. They are still owned buy the company that made them. (actually, the origional PC port of Elite may still be in legal limbo, but Elite Plus is a much better version than Elite port)
Frontier: First Encounters (aka Elite III) came out in 1995, just before windows 95, and was made entirely in assembler, which is why it requires special conditions to run. It must be installed on a FAT16 file system, not NTFS, (so you would have to install it from inside dosbox, instead of the "easy" way through win 2K or XP) and it must be installed to C:\firstenc\ not to any other location. It also requires EMS memory, and possibly XMS, (I would have to turn them off to be sure about XMS) and over 500K base memory.
Good first route lasts for 2 or three months and is a mission route. Since the Wiccan Ware Race takes at least 2 jumps in your starting ship. Sell everthing you can from your ship, except the autopilot, atmospheric sheilding (so you can land on planets) and engine. buy medicines stop off at the system that starts with an "s" (cant remember the name, and go to the bbs to sell medicines.
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