Subject: Turbo button on old PCs

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 13:50:10 +0300

Hi,

I suddenly remembered that old PCs had a "turbo" button, clicking on that
was supposed to speed up the PC in some way.

This button no longer exist in modern PCs.

Any idea what this button did? (if anything at all?) Why didn't they simply
make the PC go faster all the time? And why did they remove that button?

Thanks,
Chen

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 14:05:46 +0300

> make the PC go faster all the time? And why did they remove that button?

What I remember (but I'm not sure) is that for a few years after PCs were
invented, their CPU speed was relatively constant, and stupid game developers
came to rely on that speed. When you ditched your 8088 and moved on to a
80386sx (say), which was (say) 8 times faster, suddenly games started running
at an impossible pace. I am guessing the Turbo button was to allow you to slow
your CPU to play these old games. But I don't have any proof that this is
indeed what the Turbo button was for: I never actually had a computer with
such a button on it.

Since my computer did not have a Turbo button (I'm talking about the end
of the eighties now), I ended up writing a TSR ("terminate stay resident")
which grabbed the timer interrupt (which ran 18.2 a second in DOS, if I
remember correctly) and did a useless time-wasting loop. There were certain
games (e.g., "Arkanoid", if I remember correctly) which were impossible to
play on the 80386sx without these tricks.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, May 29 2003, 27 Iyyar 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Lumber Cartel member #2224.
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From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 18:21:11 +0300 (IDT)

> play on the 80386sx without these tricks.

I remember downloading a program like that from a BBS. I cannot recall
what I used it for, though.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
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