Anyone remember those Turbo buttons on old PCs?

[TommyVercetti]

Here is what I don't understand. Why would anyone want to run their PC slow? So what is the point of the turbo then?

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

It's not so much slow as it is more stable.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I remember it. I had an old 386sx that was always on turbo. Didn't know anything about computers when I got it, except I wanted a computer. The joy of a 30 meg hard drive. Those were the days.


Ok maybe they weren't.

 

[IamElectro]

Those were the days.

It had something to do with the switch over from 8088 to x86 architecture in the processors. Software and computers were ungodly expensive back then so alot of people kept the same programs for a long time. I can remeber trying to play old games from my first 8088 sytem on a 386 and they were impossibly fast until you hit the turbo button slowing the system down to 8mhz I believe.

Edit:

"NAWS" for your computer this button activates it.

 

[element]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
It's not so much slow as it is more stable.

BZZZZT WRONG! Thank you for playing the misinformation game! Bob, tell our contestant what he has won!

Bob: Sir you win two tickets to www.idon'tknowwhatthefsuckI'mtalkingabout.com!

The turbo button was to slow down pcs in order to run software that was dependant on the speed of the processor, and had problems with high speed. Later on when PCs got faster programmers figured out the had to make some apps time dependant instead of processor speed dependant. Games or anything with animation tied to the processor speed were the likely apps to have this problem in the early days.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

 

[element]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

You have no clue, what's worse is, even after being informed you are still clueless! This has nothing to do with stability, ass.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: element®

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

You have no clue, what's worse is, even after being informed you are still clueless! This has nothing to do with stability, ass.

"The turbo button was to slow down pcs in order to run software that was dependant on the speed of the processor, and had problems with high speed."

That's one way that I describe stability.

Fvck off.

 

[OulOat]

Wow, they sure have poor taste in names. I thought turbo meant it ran faster

 

[pray4mojo]

Originally posted by: element®

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

You have no clue, what's worse is, even after being informed you are still clueless! This has nothing to do with stability, ass.

What a big damn deal about a turbo button. Geez.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: OulOat
Wow, they sure have poor taste in names. I thought turbo meant it ran faster :/

It did. The idea was to leave it on, but turn it off when you needed to.

 

[freebee]

It would be nice if modern systems had a "TURBO" button that auto OC the system (processor and video card), increase the fan speed, modifies voltages etc. for use when gaming or multimedia....but with a quick flip you can turn it off for ordinary usage.

 

[pray4mojo]

I was just thinking...
Wouldn't it be nice if we still had a turbo button?

 

[B00ne]

it has something to do with old games (posibly other software too) not having a timer, but using the clock frequency of the proc as their time-meter. with the Turbo button u could adjust your "fast " proc speed to make those old clock driven apps work...

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: B00ne
it has something to do with old games (posibly other software too) not having a timer, but using the clock frequency of the proc as their time-meter. with the Turbo button u could adjust your "fast " proc speed to make those old clock driven apps work...

This is the correct answer.

It doesen't have anything to do with stability, it's just for old games or software that would run faster than normal on faster processors than they were designed for.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: element?/B]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

You have no clue, what's worse is, even after being informed you are still clueless! This has nothing to do with stability, ass.

"The turbo button was to slow down pcs in order to run software that was dependant on the speed of the processor, and had problems with high speed."

That's one way that I describe stability.

Fvck off.

no....nowadays, ur computer can be under load and not under load on it's own...cpu's back then didn't have this nifty feature.......they were always under load..no matter what ...it was always processing........so to "save power" during down time, u press the turbo button to go slower

Those were the days.

It had something to do with the switch over from 8088 to x86 architecture in the processors. Software and computers were ungodly expensive back then so alot of people kept the same programs for a long time. I can remeber trying to play old games from my first 8088 sytem on a 386 and they were impossibly fast until you hit the turbo button slowing the system down to 8mhz I believe.

Edit:

"NAWS" for your computer this button activates it.

hehehhe...yeah at first that's what i thought....but the real reason was to conserve power (yes, it was quite power consuming to have a processing processor to process nothing back in the days..."under load" didn't exist...it was always under load)..yeah.....i'm right..hehehehe

 

[HiTek21]

The Turbo Switch on my Pentium 133 did nothing, it just switched those numbers from 133mhz to 08mhz

 

[DanTMWTMP]

Originally posted by: element?/b]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
It's not so much slow as it is more stable.

BZZZZT WRONG! Thank you for playing the misinformation game! Bob, tell our contestant what he has won!

Bob: Sir you win two tickets to www.idon'tknowwhatthefsuckI'mtalkingabout.com!

The turbo button was to slow down pcs in order to run software that was dependant on the speed of the processor, and had problems with high speed. Later on when PCs got faster programmers figured out the had to make some apps time dependant instead of processor speed dependant. Games or anything with animation tied to the processor speed were the likely apps to have this problem in the early days.

BZZZZZ NO ELEMENT..nop..i'm sorry, but UR WRONG ..c'mon stop flaming each other fvcktards...hehehe

.....read my post two posts up ..well not entirely wrong, but.. ur kinda on the right track..the info they give on google is not the real reason



it is generally believed that it was for software....but it was mainly OS's/cpu fault...OS's back then didn't have anything to slow down the load of the cpu or do something to emulate a slow down...cpu's were under load 100% of the time...even if it was processing nothing...so older software of course would run insanely fast on newer computers, but the turbo button was around older than the newer comps...
...turbo was originally for downtime........
and later, the general public thought it was for software that was designed for slower comps ...

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

considering you generally consider yourself morally superior to everyone, thats piss poor behavior. be a man and concede with some grace when your wrong.

 

[TheCorm]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: element®

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

You have no clue, what's worse is, even after being informed you are still clueless! This has nothing to do with stability, ass.

"The turbo button was to slow down pcs in order to run software that was dependant on the speed of the processor, and had problems with high speed."

That's one way that I describe stability.

Fvck off.

Cobalt....use your mind control powers than Lifers have to make him insert his head up his own arse....heh heh....what?....that's Dr Xavier not lifers....ah....

Damn stupid wording....I always used to think...hmmm turbo....must mean it goes faster with it on! By their naming convention are car with a turbo should go slower but have better control and stability on the road.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt
Hense the software being more stable.

See? I have SOME clue. I just don't know everything about it like your great and mighty asstard self.

considering you generally consider yourself morally superior to everyone, thats piss poor behavior. be a man and concede with some grace when your wrong.

Jesus.

People will dig up just about anything to have more ground to stand on in an arguement --true or not.

:| Fvck you.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

so who knows the real reason?..i put my "theory of turbo buttons" down......stop getting ur prides in the ways dudes....
turbo buttons were a big part of our geek past....

 

[atom]

I think most people used it to slow their PC down for compatibility reasons. Back in the day how many people leaved their PC's on 24/7 like they do now?

 

[cressida]

I was young then, I remember taking that button off my dad's computer and eating it and proceeded to run around the house.

j/k, I never knew what it was for as well

 

[dman]

In the days with jumpered clock settings, someboards had a row of 2pin connectors instead of a shorter row of 3 pin connectors. At one point I set the turbo switch to one of the multipliers to go from say, 2.5x to 3x when you pushed it. Of course it was unstable if you did it while the PC was running, but, it worked fine from power off, so pushing it on mine really did 'turbo' charge the PC. Was useful for running some games back then, an extra 33MHz really made a difference. Now an extra 200MHz is (usually) hardly noticible.