Why PCs Had a TURBO Button

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Older computers often had a button marked TURBO - was it a button that could make your PC go faster with just one press? Why don't current PCs have this feature?
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[@FStoppers]

I had a PC with a turbo button and when I took it apart I realized the button was directly wired to the LED light. It literally did nothing but turn on a light.

[@lstwo.]

imagine having a literal "LED ON / OFF" button on your pc 😭😭

[@christoffer4862]

Holy shit Sue somebody because that would definitely have lead to system instability at high clock speeds

[@kamal92606]

😂😂

[@dragon2knight]

We all pushed it, all of us. We didn't care what it did, it was just unheard of NOT to push the TURBO button!

[@phd_gaming5010]

I mean... It's TURBO... What did they expect us to do?

[@1staterp]

This, I had it pushed all the time. It was TURBO. never knew what it actually did

[@FentonWenge]

and yet we never locked the key lock.

[@Fipsh]

Was never old enough to ever see that a turbo button existed until now.

[@garcjr]

I wish there was a turbo for that 56k modem we all had.

[@bobedibob3084]

the key and power switch thing is something that needs to come back it looks much more fun to use than just a button

[@AaronShenghao]

Let me start my PC… oh no my PC have a flat battery.

[@PoisonedAl]

The power switch/button on old PCs were actually power cut offs hooked up to the power supply. Not the motherboard standby button you have now. That did mean that you have to "park" the system before shutting it off. If you didn't, you could risk having files corrupted or the disk head not go into a parking position and damage the dive if it got moved.

[@icky_thump]

reminds me of a super car's ignition sequence.

[@TheLandFinana6044]

I mean, it wouldn't be impossible to mount a key switch to your desk or PC case and run the start button through it. Actually i'm pretty sure i've seen someone do it so what's stopping you

[@cool110]

@@TheLandFinana6044 Although the standard for those key switches was to turn the keyboard off rather than the power.

[@UrvineSpiegel]

The guy who invented the Turbo button's ancestor must have been the dude who named Greenland

[@ReeN1995]

Or Iceland lol

[@scrapmine]

@@ReeN1995 Vikings were good at naming things, they even called america "Wine land" when they discovered it around year 1000.

[@IronBrandon22]

As a game developer, this is one of the most important things to remember when programming. While some game engines nowadays do it for you, the engine I use requires me to multiply anything to do with time by a variable called 'delta' which is the time since the last frame, and if you don't do this it might look right for you, but it'll be completely broken on computers that run much faster or slower than yours. For example, in one of my games before I knew the importance of this magical 'delta' variable I would just decrease a timer variable by exactly 0.016 every frame, and on my computer (which ran at 60 FPS) it worked just fine and decrease by about 0.96 each second, by at 30 FPS it would decrease by 0.48 every second, causing it to slow down.

[@XeonKnights]

Lego island control system massacre lol

[@johnpekkala6941]

Exactly, I develop games on my spare time and I use 3 different game engines at the moment. Unity, Unreal5 and Godot and they all have a delta time system that allows the computer to compensate for the CPU speed so that the game always run equally fast no matter how fast the computer that is running the game is. These things and tricks however did not exist back then. Back in those days games were written in Assembler or maybee sometimes very low level C all from the ground up without any help from game engines and similar tools that we have and use today.

[@alexatkin]

@@johnpekkala6941 It was such a mess, as I recall when the CPU bus speed started changing too strange things would happen. I also recall strange issues with compatibility if your ISA or PCI bus was running slightly too fast, particularly common with early overclocking when all the clocks were synchronised.

[@VlikeInMewe]

I always knew delta was important, but never knew why till today

[@XeonKnights]

@@VlikeInMewe kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHTQopWZmKikf5I&ab_channel=MattKC this video explain it very well

[@RamiKattan]

We had a turbo button on our first PC: 286, 1mb ram, 40mb hdd and 2 floppies. Turbo changed processor speed between 15 and 7 MHz i think

[@the_kombinator]

8 and 16 more likely.

[@Meshamu]

@@the_kombinator I don't know, some old computers had the CPU run at odd speeds, like 4.77, or 7.14 MHz.

[@the_kombinator]

@@Meshamu Those would be rare, but not unheard of. I know I can set my bus speed to 7.14Mhz on one of my 386s though.

[@harshnemesis]

@@the_kombinator They actually weren't rare, 4.77 mhz was exactly what the original ibm 8086 cpu ran at.. Also Sega genesis had 7mhz cpu

[@the_kombinator]

@@harshnemesis Have you ever seen a 7 segment display on an original XT? Or on a Sega Genesis? Bet they had turbo buttons too ;)

[@Augustus_Imperator]

I remember tinkering as a very small kid with an already old pc, it had the turbo button which increased the 10mhz processor to a whopping 20mhz

[@BloonMan137]

Bro you bouta get all of the frames per day with that 20mhz

[@ItsHonski]

That’s still double the clock lol

[@lewisw5366]

Im sure my pc went from 33Mhz to 66Mhz thinking back lol

[@the_kombinator]

LOL I bet it was a 286. It's worth a decent amount to the right person.

[@iggysixx]

I (well.. 'we', technically) had a 386 with 16 MHz (: 5 MEGAbytes of RAM ...and a whopping 80 MEGAbyte hard drive! And.. (Hold onto your butts...).. It even had a serial port to connect a dot matrix printer 👾

[@davidrobertson411]

My first computer was a 486 w/ turbo button. I got a promo disk for a U.S. Robotics Modem (28.8k I believe). It had a game you could play and a high score would generate a code you could submit for prizes. I remember using the turbo button to slow the game way down and give yourself more time to react. Got a free T-shirt out of it.

[@EternalAmmonite]

The best comment

[@ovum]

I'd like to point out that the turbo button acting in reverse is because PC makers often plugged the connection of the Turbo button inverted (Likely due to a mistake and/or oversight). VWestlife made a video about it recently

[@stealthinator00]

I was commenting about this issue.

[@BenCos2018]

Interesting Never knew that one

[@roymather1]

I'm kind of shocked they thought turbo slowed it down

[@stealthinator00]

@@roymather1 Well when you have a mass produced product that needs humans as part of the assembly process. your bound to have mistakes.

[@Aramis444]

Things assembled by people often can have more mistakes, depending on the standard those products are made to. I’ve seen this a lot, as an electrician, with light fixtures. Connectors that are backwards, but will still technically work that way. Splices in the wrong compartment of the fixture. Sometimes all it will take is the one person in charge, deciding that’s the way the team will assemble it.

[@keagannaidoo2295]

When he said "you know what else's fine" , I expected him to follow with "a word from our sponsor"

[@arutezza]

Glad im not the only one I guess linus has to keep us on our toes

[@deraile]

I had the same reflex but only 10 seconds in: "But exactly what did it do? We're gonna tell you, after this word from our sponsor..."

[@JamieStuff]

I had that same case with the "66" display. (Nearly everyone did, back then.) The numbers were settable via DIP switches, and when I upgraded to a 486DX2/100, I set it to "99".

[@the_kombinator]

DX/4 BTW :P My P233 MMX says 233, and 586 when the turbo is off. Just so you don't mistake it for anything else.

[@Ellipsis115]

That upgrade must've felt awesome, to max out the screen, like yeah my PC is too good!

[@silverhawkroman]

I wish my PC was key operated

[@IulianGeorge-cigraphics]

I remember the turbo button. I pressed it once and the computer didn't start anymore

[@peterwoods8299]

I guess you didn't see that coming

[@williamthatsmyname]

More like the No No button, am I right.

[@Augustus_Imperator]

it served its pupose then 😆

[@Meshamu]

But why, though?

[@tidedetergentyummy]

It turbo to its death

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

The Turbo button actually had an even more important function in clones of the early IBM PC. Thing is the floppy controller was relying on the CPU speed to get the timing of the read and write operations correct. So trying to write to a diskett with the computer running at a higher speed could corrupt the filesystem on the floppy. So you were supposed to only enable the higher clock speed when the programs were started and then slow it down again before saving any document or crate a file on a floppy. And remember that at this time very few actually had a HDD in their computer so floppys was what most people booted from, ran programs from, and saved their work on. So instead of just being nice to have it was actually critical for the computers to work at first. This weakness was soon fixed with better floppy controllers that took care of the timing issues no matte how fast or slow the CPU was. As for games starting to use the RTC (Real Time Clock) for timing and controlling the speed that was far from always the case. Years later, after sound cards got really common, many games were written to use timers on the sound cards for this. That was because they had much higher precision than the RTC and allowed for better control. This was common even after HPET, or High Precision Event Timer was introduced for just this reason, but to the best of my knowledge no modern games do this. I stumbled onto this a few years back when I tried to run an old game. Everything worked fine except for some arcade sequences that was totally impossible because they speed past so quickly. After some back and forth I found out it was because of my USB sound adapter. It didn't provide the timer that the game used to pace the action. As soon as I switched to use the sound device integrated on the motherboard everything was fine as that did support the timers that the game used. If you wonder the game in question was "Ur-Quan Masters".

[@RainDownpours]

I actually recommend the video "The PC turbo button mystery finally solved!" by VWestlife. The point that I'd like to make is: the button is actually meant to speed the computer the up. But the button and the indicating light can be wired in reverse. Some manufacturer didn't wire it correctly, and that may be the cause of the confusion. It's there to ultimately toggle between the 2 speeds of the computer.

[@RainDownpours]

But it's been a while after I've watched that video, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

[@AshanSanjula]

​@@RainDownpours he uploaded a part two few weeks ago

[@C6Z06J]

I’m loving Riley as a host. His delivery with the excellent editing makes these videos some of my favorite on KZbin.

[@ThisManzzz]

Riley is my favourite person in the entire LTT company. Alex coming in at close second. He just has the perfect, loveable attitude. I want him in every video they make. no homo.

[@garyseven710]

I agree, he's clear and concise and he doesn't drone on like some tech vids I've seen.

[@raidzor5452]

You realise this video is stolen from LTT right?

[@aaronscrewface]

I still have an IBM key from an old tower on my keychain that has been on there for about 20 years now hahaha

[@JoeCensored]

Back in the day when I was using a 5x86 133mhz, the clock speed was set with jumpers. I connected the turbo button up to the jumper that would overclock it to 160mhz. I configured the number display to say both speeds. So I was one of the only people to have a turbo button that really went turbo. The most fun part is that the OC would work even when the machine was already running. So I'd launch doom or some other game and hit the turbo button to OC, then when I was done I'd hit the button again to go back to 133.

[@KyleRuggles]

Oh boy, this takes me back to the 386/486 days. Kids won't know the joys of the old days.

[@Littletime839]

Try describing to a kid the joys of getting a mouse driver to load into hi memory or how EGA compares to FullHD

[@sciencefun5482]

in 50 years people be like: Oh boy this takes me back to the i9 13900 days

[@the_kombinator]

My kid does. He knows how to get into the c:\games directory and run arkanoid :D

[@frogz]

now kids can literally emulate dos on their phone.... i mean.... they wont but they can, only nerds who grew up with dos actually doing this

[@the_kombinator]

@@frogz I dunno my kid knows how to get into the games directory on any of my vintage PCs and run the game. Not so great at playing them yet but he does try.

[@trevordubinsky]

Well I had a PC that would not post with the Turbo (fast speed) turned on, until it warmed up. Once warm enough then it could post at the faster speed.

[@Luenebahn]

According to a research of the tech youtuber VWestlife, pushing the turbo In fact raised the CPU clock speed to the maximum

[@fattomandeibu]

It depended on motherboard manufacturer. Some motherboards even required a special command line tool to set turbo on or off(I think Compaq), while others would have the setting in the BIOS rather than a physical button.

[@Luenebahn]

@@fattomandeibu Intel had defined in an official spec sheet what the turbo button is supposed to do. In practice, the hardware manufacturers had handled it differently. There is clearly no general answer to what the button actually did but if you consider Intel's original definition of what this button had to do as being as the primary source, the turbo button should let your CPU run at full speed when pressed.

[@crazman123]

It depends on how the button was wired. Sometimes, the button was wire in the invers, so when the button was pressed in, turbo would turn off not on.

[@stealthinator00]

The issue is switches come in 3 wires. A ground wire , normally open and normally closed.

[@tisjester]

How it was wired is not very relevant. The point is if there was no button the the PC would run at its maximum speed all the time. The included the button to allow you to toggle it to the slower speed. Then this get more convoluted when they made the default speed the slower speed and you needed to jumper the speed closed to get the higher speed. That basic jist was the Turbo button was included to allow you to run the computer at a slower speed.

[@stealthinator00]

@@tisjester The issue is that the connectors on the button is a 3 pin socket header. when you assemble a computer in the factory you can get confused of what orientation the connector you need to plug in the pin header. most push buttons switches have 3 wires. A ground wire, normally closed and normally open. The wires are terminated by a 3 pin connector. Also the connector and socket is very small and is places in a tight space making hard to check if it was connected the right way round. when you are working in a factory are expects so many computers to be made with in the day. you can't afford to just take your time checking. Typically the connector on the motherboard is 2 pin header like what you expect. When you try to connect a 3 pin connector to a 2 pin header with no instruction. you are going to have a time that will have a switch that seams to work backwards. An easy fix is to move the connector to a different position on the header. VWestlife did a good video about the turbo button.

[@DodoGTA]

An old Intel manual says that having Turbo enabled boosts the CPU frequency 🐸

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

The button is actually meant to speed the computer the up. But the button and the indicating light can be wired in reverse. Some manufacturer - and dumb 'PC assemblers' like the ones in the shop I worked at - didn't wire it correctly, and that may be the cause of the confusion. It's there to ultimately toggle between the 2 speeds of the computer.

[@AshanSanjula]

Yep it does that. Didn't you watch the whole video?

[@the_kombinator]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 You could set the switch either way, (3 wire switch) I personally set all mine to have turbo on with the switch in the "off" position - it made the case more aesthetic with all the buttons on the same level.

[@Sgt_Hest]

I would love a physical button to switch between a stock and an overclocked setting.

[@technicalfool]

There is one handheld PC (OnexPlayer) that has a turbo button, and it basically switches the TDP limit of the system from battery-saving to "fuggit I want moar frames".

[@monhi64]

Couldn’t you technically do that with a programmable key switch. Definitely wouldn’t be as fun as a button on the actual pc

[@ScytheNoire]

Am I too old if my first PC was 8086 and I remember turbo buttons and math coprocessors.

[@kmoecub]

Thank you for educating the youth about how we got to where we are today. Especially the part where a button is faster and easier to use than a nested menu.

[@3Cr15w311]

0:55 Intel 8088. I wish they'd gone with 8086 in the original PC but they didn't. I had an AST 386/33 PC in the late 80s a button that switched it between 3 speeds. By default it ran 33 MHz but it could switch down to speeds simulating the speeds of the IBM AT and IBM PC so that old DOS games could run at the right speed. On most machines I had, the "turbo" button slowed the machine down to the slower speed since they booted into the fastest speed automatically, or could be set to, and why wouldn't you? Older ones had a turbo mode that had to be activated with software. Texas Instruments 286 machines booted into 6 MHz and you had to activate turbo 8 MHz by software! It seemed the "turbo" thing was disappearing by the mid 90s and those LED displays of the clock speed that were common for a few years went away. This was a neat little trip down memory lane.

[@CanuckGod]

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, the earliest PCs had 8088s (8 bit bus) as their main CPU as opposed to 8086 (16 bit bus)... but in fairness to Riley, I doubt he'd ever have used PCs of that vintage to know what processor they actually had, and he probably just read it off the script while assuming it was correct, because x86 or smth. Ironically, the "weaker" 8088 actually came out after the 8086 did, but was more economical in terms of cost and the cost of the peripheral cards it would end up using were likewise more economical than if they had went with a 16 bit bus at that stage of computing.

[@llynellyn]

What Riley said is technically correct, the issue is due to programs written for the 8086 architecture at it's original clock speed running too fast on 286/etc hardware. The fact IBM opted to use the castrated 8088 variant of the 8086 in their Personal Computers to save money isn't really that relevant as the software in question was written for 8086 architecture. To use an analogy, a lot of early 90s software was Written for the Pentium architecture, but still ran on the Celeron.

[@CanuckGod]

@@llynellyn I mean, this is technically true, but the way the whole explanation was worded implied that those computers were using 8086 CPUs specifically, which was rarely the case, though the 8088 was part of the x86 family of processors - it's more a case of semantics, and probably not that important in the grand scheme of things. Having said that, I do agree, the main point of the video was to point out that the idea was to try to maintain some compatibility with older software by slowing the processor down, which a lot of younger folk didn't know about prior to this video being released, so it's nice to see them provide some light on computing history 👍

[@CFWhitman]

On most of the machines I used, the turbo button made the computer run faster when it was pushed in. Fortunately, they mostly had displays to show the state. Of course, the others were confusing. The rule was, always have it running faster unless a program was running too fast, then slow it down.

[@matsv201]

The turbo button didn't change the speed if the cpu, but the fsb. This mattered when you had a DX2 cpu.. The thing was that both 8086 and 8088 had the same fsb speed. But on a lot of old PC there was no real time clock. So in steed of measuring time, the game measured the FSB speed and slowing it down It was typically very primitive simply rendering one frame, then waiting set amount of time. This work good on really simple game. That is why Sierra game have speed setting, where "highest" is a wait time of 0. And that is also why the speed controller is so diffrent between diffent computers.

[@jarsky]

Fun fact:Before the turbo button you had to push a key combination (like Ctrl +F12) to enable the turbo mode. So it would always reset on a reboot/shutdown.

[@stupidmassive]

To be clear, Turbo mode as detailed in the original specifications, does always make the CPU run faster (really just it's normal intended speed). What varied from system to system was the configuration of the button, whether pushing it in turned on turbo mode, or off. VWestlife has a great video about this exact subject, the pins for turbo buttons were configurable for both ways.

[@hovant6666]

So that's why trying to play OneMustFall in DOSBox on my first contemporary PC had me getting Perfected in under 1s

[@amorphousblob2721]

I had both of the games shown in the video. The turbo button on my computer indicated as being "on" in the faster mode, which was essentially a lie, but made it easier to understand which button position corresponded to what speed.

[@ulti-mantis]

3:23 I like that the Win10 and especially the Win8 screenshots are way older than the Win7 one

[@Healtsome]

I've also had Turbo button on an old keyboard but instead it had a different function of controlling the key repeating speed.

[@MonochromeWench]

Before the inclusion of led 7 segment displays for the speed (mostly a marketting thing) there was just a simple orange led for turbo state. Lit was high speed. Button pushed for low speed was a feature of some motherboards as it allowed the system to start in high speed without the button even being connected. If your case didn't have a turbo button you'd want a high speed by default motherboard. Many systems were pushed for high speed, so to know the state look at the led. Once Pentiums came around Turbo became completely uselss as it just couldn't slow the cpu down enough to match a 4.77 mhz 8088. Thecpu cache made pentiums way too fast. Even on a 486 it was pretty useless. 386s were old and slow enough that it still made sense at the time they were released. Old games had bad timing because the Original PC didn't have any support for vsync so games couldn't time themselves on display refresh. VGA did support vsync so vga games are usually much better behaved. Windows games must use a hardware timer because they cannot rely on vsync being on as its usually a gpu driver setting.

[@monhi64]

A lot of people were saying that frequently the buttons were just installed inverted because it was pretty easy for the pc builder to mix that up but I’m sure there were some computers that did it intentionally

[@Chainer00000]

Talk about a blast from the past. I remember almost 30 years later that particular shell.

[@ToadRoach]

4:14 "those old 286 pc's" look like a perfect match to my old 486DX2

[@mendyc158]

I remember have it pushed in always.. didn’t know what it did but it said turbo That was on my first pc tho.. the next one had high/low signals and I would always keep it on high

[@vanillabeans32087]

1:34 Nice.

[@Dan-Simms]

Omg I had totally forgotten about the turbo buttons on PCs man that brings me back.

[@sigen7053]

I remember i rewired my turbo button in my old case when i upgraded to a Pentium 100mhz. With the button activated, it ran on 150mhz. It was my very first overclocking. 😀

[@dstinnettmusic]

Reminds me of the older CNC machines at my work. They all have knobs that control “power” of the machine. 0 stops the motors and 100 is full speed…but the old machines go to 150.

[@Starfals]

I always thought its just an Overclock, and I guess it is? o0 The programs timing thing brings painful memories... some games just didn't work well.

[@arrowghost]

It's not just a Turbo button not found on most common casings, it's also the classic Reset button to restart your OS by force.

[@xaenon]

the provisions for reset buttons are still on most mobos. Simple matter to add the switch and wire it up. In most cases, though, it's just a matter of holding the start button for at least five seconds to force a restart.

[@cst1229]

@@xaenon I thought holding the power button forced a _shutdown_ and not a restart.

[@xaenon]

@@cst1229 D'oh! You're (mostly) right. It is NOT a reset as I stated previously. I had a brain fart, lol. But it's not really a proper 'shutdown', either. What most people call a 'shutdown' involves prompts to save your work, close programs, etc., then Windows unloads drivers, saves certain settings, logs off, etc. before actually powering off. This is initiated by pushing the power button on the case momentarily, or by using Windows' 'start' menu. Holding the power button for five seconds bypasses all that. It's similar to yanking the plug out of the wall. No prompts to save your work, no proper logout, none of that. Just.... OFF. *_NOW._* Forcing an immediate power-off and then restarting the system is the functional equivalent of the old hardware reset button. Most desktop system mobos still have provisions for a hardware reset switch, though most modern cases lack the actual button.

[@FelixLantiguaCamacho]

Back in my days, with XT/286/386/486 in short words, it is like "overclocking" for these days, and it really worked, I had a XT computer, then 286, then 386, then 486, even computers with AMD CPU INTEL compatible, and with CYRIX CPU.

[@baby333]

I LOVE RILEY SO MUCH XD So smooth and makes videos way more enjoyable XD

[@Kualinar]

Another thing the Turbo button did was enable the CPU to use it's full data buss in addition of running at it's full speed. The 8086 had only an 8 bit wide data buss, while the 80286 and 80386 had 16 bit wide data busses. The slow mode forced them to run in SX mode instead of DX mode.

[@CanuckGod]

You're incorrect there; actually, the 8086 had a 16 bit bus as well. What Riley (and the script creator) both screwed up on was that the early IBM PC compatibles used the 8088, not the 8086. The 8088 did indeed have an 8 bit bus, and was also cheaper to make and sell than a 8086 was at the time - think of the 8088 as a cost reduced version of the 8086 (which actually predated the 8088 even though it had a larger 16 bit bus).

[@Foersom_]

0:32 He is like Napoleon Dynamite of computers. Sweet.

[@vadimmatskevich8439]

Very interesting fact! I didn't know it till this video but i remember it from childhood. I saw them 20+ years ago on some old consoles (and may be on old computers sorry for my poor memory).

[@AsifAAli]

My ASUS G30AB Desktop came with this button instead of usual 'Reset' button. There's default OC profiles in UEFI Bios, so while being in Windows, you can press it and it will go from 3.7Ghz to 3.8Ghz and 4.1Ghz. Instant over-clocking. I never needed to boost even in CS:GO and still gave great headshots.

[@softdreams1776]

On some mother boards from 2000 to 2004 i was able to rig and configure the turbo button to actully over clock the AMD processors i had some desktops i built hoolong them up to the over clock jumpers it worked. there was 3 congigurationd on the jumpers for base clock speed and over clock speed from 2.4Ghz to 2.33ghz ran good. and 2.80Ghz wich it got to hot and froze up. the button made it do much easyer then having to keep opening the case and pulling tinny jumprs thst fall in the cracks switching them. :)

[@dnoodspodu1159]

04:16 Finally a sound take on RGB from LMG

[@exoticlol]

My friend played on Nintendo Switch with a controller for Mario Kart (idk) and it had a turbo button. We joked about the button blowing up the console. This video reminded me of it, had a chuckle.

[@heresyourproblem9939]

I remember as a teenager downloading trial software, and winding back my desktop date to keep the trials forever. this only worked for a couple years haha

[@GuardianSpeed]

that segway from managing servers to the linode sponsor was smoother than every single segway that linus made

[@wzhkmedia]

I love the joke about the unicorn vomit at the end....lol

[@ChrisDelChris]

I can’t believe I’m just now learning this. We used Mo’Slo back in the day for the same thing.

[@StopItUrKillingMe]

If the turbo button slows your PC than it is wired incorrectly. Latching buttons had 3 contact pins and motherboards had 2 so it was easy to plug it in incorrectly and make it work in reverse. Later PC model had a momentary button and a turbo LED indicator or a small display that showed the clock speed to battle this issue. Also if I remember correctly, alt+ctrl+numplus and alt+ctrl+numminus could be used to turn turbo mode on and off.

[@Mr.Morden]

My first PC didn't even have a turbo button, it was the PC that made future PCs need a turbo button. 🤣

[@Angular777]

The O.S. looks at the onboard clock for time in case it can't get it from the server, but it syncs with a time server in Windows if I'm not mistaken.

[@platt_mallar]

I remember having a Magic: the Gathering computer game back in the 90's that ran off your cpu speed. It was loads of fun, until I bought a new computer. Then I was instantly killed because my cpu was so fast that I couldn't even see what monsters were attacking. *edit* It was Magic: The Gathering: Battlemage

[@foxfaisal82]

Lazy Game Review (LGR) released a video about the same thing around 7 years ago. This video about the turbo button from Techquickie reminds me of the video about the same thing by LGR 🙂.

[@SwissMade89]

there was a 33 on the small display, after pressing it is was a 66. at the time for me it was just a higher number. i did not know what to think of it. So you had to press it! higher is better

[@1.618_Murphy]

I never pushed it! I used to think it would release NOS infused exhaust gas out of my PC's one exhaust fan in the back frying the cables! Partial effect of watching Fast and Furious movies in the early 2000s! 😂

[@johnantonopoulous6381]

This was a thing in to the 2000's but even in the 90's they worked on some pc's. off my old amd k7 ran at 800mhz and with it on it ran at 1ghz but it also ramped up the fans to 100 percent all the time.

[@notenoughmonkeys]

I think they should use the same logic for power buttons. When in the On state, your PC enters a power saving mode consuming now power.

[@charlescote3989]

Shoutout to the animator that put talking Riley in the pong ball, it didn't go unnoticed.

[@NateRD90]

My gaming laptop's overclocking button is called "TURBO". Of course, all it does it make the laptop sound like a jet engine, for exchange for slightly cooler temperatures and a few extra frames per second.

[@001delight9]

Overclockers : Shifting to Maximum Overdrive Non-Overclockers : I should've have a Turbo.

[@adrianpita8591]

turbo buttons? retro PC's? linode sponsorship? what's this, Michael MJD?

[@vladislavkaras491]

Thanks for such historical lesson. As a person born 2002 I have never heard of this button :D

[@horizont6172]

It’s like in the Max Steel, you go turbo whenever the situation call’s for it.

[@Octoschizare]

Anyone else have "boot disc" in those days? It was a floppy that you'd insert when you want to play games that were too good for the PC... often created by some computer genius friend and the PC read it on startup and it somehow made those games able to actually load and play properly. Probably reduced the amount of components the PC loads during startup... Seemed like magic.

[@Aeturnalis]

2:54 to skip ad

[@micheldonais7476]

Fun times. Teach used to have a v20, and Turbo made the v20 crash. So we couldn't put it Turbo. And this made the computer slower than an original 8088. -- That said, I would love to have a modern computer with an actual crank, that would have force feedback with the CPU/GPU usage, and the speed of the crank would actually overclock everything.

[@Labyrinth6000]

I bet speed runners would LOVE to have the Turbo button make a come back! I remember when my first computer at age 4 had a Turbo button and I always kept it at low, though seeing games go Uber fast was unplayable, it was hilarious!

[@Sammysapphira]

Speed runs are based off of in game time 99.9% of the time such that hardware differences (load times) don't affect the run. Turbo would only make the game harder to play.

[@ryuuseiSoul]

Speedrunners wouldn't want to use a turbo button. Changes in game run speeds would need to be consistent for everyone who plays the game to be valid. Otherwise, you might as well just be running cheats (which are usually banned).

[@ryuuseiSoul]

@@Sammysapphira Even a lot of speedrunning games that used to run off of in-game time switched to running on real-time in recent years, though. If anything, Turbo would just make things too inconsistent between speedrunners and artificially sped up (basically like if you just ran a game on an emulator and ran it on 3x speed or something).

[@Joshinken]

Turbo always speeds the computer up, some pcs just had the turbo button wired up as normally closed so its in turbo while unpressed and takes it out of turbo by pressing

[@justinbeamon6624]

Waitttt computers had keys back then???? I want that!!

[@sonickrnd]

This allows to disable keyboard if I remember correctly

[@hellomine2849]

Vroom vroom lol 1:54

[@thomasafine]

Why did you troll me personally there at the end? "Fine" self?

[@julianlay8681]

2.06 that is freaking bananas and i want it on my pc

[@toddeffinhaley]

damn i didnt expect to catch a stray like that as an eagles fan on techquickie.... lmao

[@raysea7267]

technology has took a huge leap from that turbo button to now i kind of miss that turbo button ♥ great vid btw ♠

[@spongerglory]

Why must you make me feel old!?

[@marshinz5696]

Taking shots at my Birds is a good way to lose my very important sub...🤣

[@duncanmcpherson6578]

Nice one from the 80's when everything got turbo'd marketed hair dryers vacuum cleaners tooth brushes at workshop we'd just put turbo in front of nearly every word just for a stir Turbo watering can anyone? Good to see you're covering the important things haha smiles

[@savagepro9060]

Who else remembered software to 'expand' DOS' 640K memory?

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

QEMM!

[@savagepro9060]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 come on man, don't show your age!🤣👊👍

[@CanuckGod]

TBF, by the time I owned my first PC (in 1994 at age 16) EMM386 was already included with DOS 6.22, but I do remember QEMM as well 🤣

[@uthmanbaksh3530]

And Here I was thinking that the TURBO Button made the computer Fester! I mean there is a whole movie called Turbo about a snail that dreamed of being a Racer!

[@boblevieux]

Unrelated. I had once a 486 with one broken pin, it was still working and Sandra id it as a 486 DX-3 75MHz.

[@ravencorvus7903]

Riley said I'm fine. Really made my day 🤣

[@triplelllgaming]

why did this video say this video's by tesla lol

[@ImHeadshotSniper]

hacked.

[@triplelllgaming]

@@ImHeadshotSniper wait what ._.

[@Undice]

@@triplelllgaming yeah ltt got hacked, don't go to the livestream it's a scam.

[@Zer-je7nq]

hacked lol

[@IstAuchEgal_]

Kinda wierd seeing ltt being completely compromised

[@monkeman246]

Lmao, “turbocharger from a high performance car” there’s a lot of shitboxes that have them too ool

[@Besso0]

Love the Riley in the pong game!

[@CuuBluu]

0:30 How dare you call my team inferior? 😡

[@Pyroscity]

Hey, at least they’re raising it to my team

[@dadgurt5430]

"It's Turbo time!!!" -Arnie

[@jamesg8246]

Never had one slow down with Turbo on. It was always 4.7Mhz or 10Mhz on Turbo. I would actually use a dos command called literally "slowdown" to make a game work right if it was running too fast to play.

[@xxnike0629xx]

You know you're old if you remember the Turbo button on the desktop PC. :: feels old ::

[@dennisfahey2379]

The original 8088 was clocked at 4.77Mhz (14.318Mhz /3) on the IBM PC because it was a multiple of the NTSC Colorburst 3.58Mhz frequency (14.318Mhz/4) used by the original graphics card the "CGA". The VGA came later. The actual CPU could run at 8Mhz and the Turbo button allowed you to. The problem was if you sped up the clock of the CPU you sped up the Counter/Timer logic by the same ratio. So your idea of a one millisecond "tick" just got boosted up and was not what you thought. This was because original PC's and their CLONES had to be built the same way to be 100% compatible. There was no Realtime Clock chip with battery. Everytime you booted you needed to set the date and time. When the RTC was added (PS2 and AT) the counter/timer function was now independent of the CPU and a millisecond was always a millisecond regardless of processor or its base clock. For any system engineer at the time the design decisions made by the IBM Boca Raton team seemed to be to limit the design to little more than a terminal product offering different graphics options. Remember this was a period where you bought a computer and a separate text terminal AND IBM sold computers already. The limited expansion, the small number of interrupts, the really small amount of supported total memory (640Kb) - all made for a cobbled experience. Apple's LISA gave you more options BUT the Macintosh took many away. It cobbled the machine more than the PC in some ways and the rest is history. Fixing the PC's original 8 bit ISA bus limitations (and the new '286 processor's huge 16MB memory space) was the wider 16 bit ISA followed by MIcrochannel, EISA and then PCI (parallel) and PCI-Express (Serial). ASIC integration then SOC was the only way to do it at an acceptable price point. (Count the number of chips each generation of MOBO). (And bonus history - every processor in the 1980s (and each chip company had a unique one) also had an expansion bus associated with it. The IBM, being Intel used a chopped up version of Intel's Multibus to allow it to use LSI expansion chips that were designed to talk to Intel CPUs without too much effort. IBM's BIOS allowed them to change chips without breaking the operating system. The OS talked to the hardware through the BIOS back then. Unfortunately that was too narrowly defined AND slow. You first got BIOS extensions then UEFI - allowing the BIOS to be upgraded/extended. Of course you couldn't have an upgradable BIOS until it moved to erasable field programmable (FLASH) memory. You can thank the iPod for making that cheap.)

[@arivald6677]

Fallout 1 without patch has this issue. World travel map was very slow originally when installed on modern CPU suddenly you move to fast to click on places.

[@nicholasneyhart396]

Ok, that football joke was bold and I am.simultaneously furious and amused.