Why PCs Had a TURBO Button

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  • Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
  • Set up your own server today and get a $100 60-day credit at: linode.com/tec...
    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?
    Leave a reply with your requests for future episodes.
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Комментарии • 591

  • @FStoppers
    @FStoppers 10 месяцев назад +72

    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.
      @lstwo. 7 месяцев назад +5

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

    • @christoffer4862
      @christoffer4862 6 месяцев назад +4

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

    • @kamal92606
      @kamal92606 5 месяцев назад +1

      😂😂

  • @dragon2knight
    @dragon2knight Год назад +1390

    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
      @phd_gaming5010 Год назад +90

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

    • @1staterp
      @1staterp Год назад +45

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

    • @FentonWenge
      @FentonWenge Год назад +18

      and yet we never locked the key lock.

    • @Fipsh
      @Fipsh Год назад +7

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

    • @garcjr
      @garcjr Год назад +16

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

  • @UrvineSpiegel
    @UrvineSpiegel Год назад +70

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

    • @ReeN1995
      @ReeN1995 Год назад +2

      Or Iceland lol

    • @scrapmine
      @scrapmine 3 месяца назад +3

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

  • @bobedibob3084
    @bobedibob3084 Год назад +449

    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
      @AaronShenghao Год назад +40

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

    • @PoisonedAl
      @PoisonedAl Год назад +41

      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
      @icky_thump Год назад +7

      reminds me of a super car's ignition sequence.

    • @TheLandFinana6044
      @TheLandFinana6044 Год назад +4

      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
      @cool110 Год назад +2

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

  • @Augustus_Imperator
    @Augustus_Imperator Год назад +541

    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
      @BloonMan137 Год назад +65

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

    • @ItsHonski
      @ItsHonski Год назад +45

      That’s still double the clock lol

    • @lewisw5366
      @lewisw5366 Год назад +19

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

    • @the_kombinator
      @the_kombinator Год назад +7

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

    • @iggysixx
      @iggysixx Год назад +19

      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 👾

  • @RamiKattan
    @RamiKattan Год назад +160

    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
      @the_kombinator Год назад +3

      8 and 16 more likely.

    • @Meshamu
      @Meshamu Год назад +11

      @@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
      @the_kombinator Год назад +4

      @@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
      @harshnemesis Год назад +2

      @@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
      @the_kombinator Год назад

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

  • @ovum
    @ovum Год назад +90

    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
      @stealthinator00 Год назад +1

      I was commenting about this issue.

    • @BenCos2018
      @BenCos2018 Год назад

      Interesting
      Never knew that one

    • @roymather1
      @roymather1 Год назад +1

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

    • @stealthinator00
      @stealthinator00 Год назад +3

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

    • @Aramis444
      @Aramis444 4 месяца назад

      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
    @keagannaidoo2295 Год назад +73

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

    • @arutezza
      @arutezza Год назад +5

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

    • @deraile
      @deraile Год назад +1

      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..."

  • @blahorgaslisk7763
    @blahorgaslisk7763 Год назад +2

    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".

  • @IulianGeorge-cigraphics
    @IulianGeorge-cigraphics Год назад +141

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

  • @JamieStuff
    @JamieStuff Год назад +45

    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
      @the_kombinator Год назад +1

      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
      @Ellipsis115 Год назад +3

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

    • @silverhawkroman
      @silverhawkroman Год назад +3

      I wish my PC was key operated

  • @RainDownpours
    @RainDownpours Год назад +46

    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
      @RainDownpours Год назад +4

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

    • @AshanSanjula
      @AshanSanjula Год назад +3

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

  • @trevordubinsky
    @trevordubinsky Год назад +7

    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.

  • @C6Z06J
    @C6Z06J Год назад +18

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

    • @ThisManzzz
      @ThisManzzz Год назад +1

      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
      @garyseven710 Год назад +1

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

    • @raidzor5452
      @raidzor5452 Год назад

      You realise this video is stolen from LTT right?

  • @IronBrandon22
    @IronBrandon22 Год назад +248

    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
      @XeonKnights Год назад +16

      Lego island control system massacre lol

    • @johnpekkala6941
      @johnpekkala6941 Год назад +30

      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
      @alexatkin Год назад +11

      @@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
      @VlikeInMewe Год назад +7

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

    • @XeonKnights
      @XeonKnights Год назад

      @@VlikeInMewe ruclips.net/video/2CmqbccCqI0/видео.html&ab_channel=MattKC this video explain it very well

  • @ScytheNoire
    @ScytheNoire Год назад +2

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

  • @Sgt_Hest
    @Sgt_Hest Год назад +24

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

    • @technicalfool
      @technicalfool Год назад

      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
      @monhi64 Год назад

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

  • @CFWhitman
    @CFWhitman Год назад +3

    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.

  • @kmoecub
    @kmoecub Год назад +5

    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.

  • @amorphousblob2721
    @amorphousblob2721 24 дня назад

    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.

  • @jarsky
    @jarsky Год назад +4

    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.

  • @ToadRoach
    @ToadRoach Год назад

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

  • @Healtsome
    @Healtsome Год назад +3

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

  • @MonochromeWench
    @MonochromeWench Год назад +5

    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
      @monhi64 Год назад

      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
    @Chainer00000 Год назад

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

  • @arrowghost
    @arrowghost Год назад +3

    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
      @xaenon Год назад

      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
      @cst1229 Год назад

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

    • @xaenon
      @xaenon Год назад

      @@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.

  • @LordDEADTO0L
    @LordDEADTO0L Год назад +5

    Someone got hacked

  • @charlescote3989
    @charlescote3989 Год назад

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

  • @Foersom_
    @Foersom_ Год назад

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

  • @Dan-Simms
    @Dan-Simms Год назад +1

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

  • @Aeturnalis
    @Aeturnalis Год назад +3

    2:54 to skip ad

  • @Kualinar
    @Kualinar Год назад

    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
      @CanuckGod Год назад +1

      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).

  • @Mr.Morden
    @Mr.Morden Год назад +3

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

  • @platt_mallar
    @platt_mallar Год назад +1

    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

  • @spongerglory
    @spongerglory Год назад +4

    Why must you make me feel old!?

  • @baby333
    @baby333 Год назад +1

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

  • @exoticlol
    @exoticlol Год назад

    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.

  • @horizont6172
    @horizont6172 Год назад

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

  • @softdreams1776
    @softdreams1776 Год назад

    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. :)

  • @SwissMade89
    @SwissMade89 Год назад

    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

  • @Joshinken
    @Joshinken Год назад +1

    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

  • @vadimmatskevich8439
    @vadimmatskevich8439 Год назад

    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).

  • @IstAuchEgal_
    @IstAuchEgal_ Год назад +2

    Kinda wierd seeing ltt being completely compromised

  • @xxnike0629xx
    @xxnike0629xx Год назад

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

  • @justinbeamon6624
    @justinbeamon6624 Год назад +6

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

    • @sonickrnd
      @sonickrnd Год назад +1

      This allows to disable keyboard if I remember correctly

    • @hellomine2849
      @hellomine2849 Год назад

      Vroom vroom lol 1:54

  • @foxfaisal82
    @foxfaisal82 Год назад

    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 🙂.

  • @dadgurt5430
    @dadgurt5430 Год назад +1

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

  • @vladislavkaras491
    @vladislavkaras491 Год назад

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

  • @AzraelSWFC2011
    @AzraelSWFC2011 Год назад

    Gee, thanks.. Im having flashbacks to setting the jumpers on Turbo LED displays now....

  • @johnantonopoulous6381
    @johnantonopoulous6381 Год назад

    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.

  • @Labyrinth6000
    @Labyrinth6000 Год назад +6

    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
      @Sammysapphira Год назад +1

      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
      @ryuuseiSoul Год назад

      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
      @ryuuseiSoul Год назад

      @@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).

  • @boblevieux
    @boblevieux Год назад

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

  • @jamesg8246
    @jamesg8246 Год назад

    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.

  • @micheldonais7476
    @micheldonais7476 Год назад

    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.

  • @raysea7267
    @raysea7267 Год назад

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

  • @deepblue6109
    @deepblue6109 Год назад +2

    Tesla got hacked too lol

  • @pliashmuldba
    @pliashmuldba Год назад

    What is frustrating is i live this ( real time not tinkering with a obsolete PC ), where as this video presenter had to read about it as he was not born back then.

  • @nicholasneyhart396
    @nicholasneyhart396 Год назад

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

  • @dennisfahey2379
    @dennisfahey2379 Год назад +1

    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.)

  • @JustSomeCanuck
    @JustSomeCanuck Год назад

    "But it goes to 11..."
    The first computer I ever used had one of these buttons. Good times.

  • @rajamanu8726
    @rajamanu8726 Год назад +1

    Hi Rialy,
    and everyone reading this comment.
    I recently assambled a PC, Asrock H610 Motherboard,
    Intel 12400
    Windows 10
    Problem is my usb drive is heating too much in this system,
    Same pendrive is very normal even after full read and write in onter windows laptop, or desktops.
    Local shop are unable to find any problme with it.
    Also all usb devices and Pendrives are working fine but heating too much.
    This is concerning about life of pendrive as well as future of my assambled PC.
    For your reference, Pc is not overheating/heating by any means.
    Thanks for consideration.(and for reading my crappy english)

  • @WarrenFeltmate
    @WarrenFeltmate Год назад

    You guys missed a typo in the Thanks for Watching credits. You missed the 'o' in prroducer.

  • @savagepro9060
    @savagepro9060 Год назад +3

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

    • @RogerioPereiradaSilva77
      @RogerioPereiradaSilva77 Год назад

      QEMM!

    • @savagepro9060
      @savagepro9060 Год назад +1

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

    • @CanuckGod
      @CanuckGod Год назад

      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 🤣

  • @thomasafine
    @thomasafine Год назад

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

  • @Psycandy
    @Psycandy Год назад

    can't fool me, TURBO was real, you just yelled 'Turbo Boost, KITT!' and your car would go rocket mode. EVERYTHING should have a turbo button, even the turbo button should have a turbo button. Even if it just has TURBO printed on it, that automatically makes it faster, particularly if printed in red. The bigger the button, the faster it will go, fact.

  • @Besso0
    @Besso0 Год назад

    Love the Riley in the pong game!

  • @potapotapotapotapotapota
    @potapotapotapotapotapota Год назад

    the person who realized snail shells and turbo engines look the same needs to be given a raise, and raise of a glass and a smash in the face with it because I loved that movie called Cars, Mater was my favourite he used to get me pizzas all the time

  • @toddeffinhaley
    @toddeffinhaley Год назад

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

  • @fufatko
    @fufatko Год назад +1

    I was always super scared to press it
    I thought it would destroy the pc or something

  • @TheRogueWolf
    @TheRogueWolf Год назад

    Don't think that I didn't catch Riley's head in that Pong ball. Or the score being... nice.

  • @SmashPortal
    @SmashPortal Год назад

    Question: Would it have been unreasonable for programs back then to use the system time?

  • @RaceSimCentral
    @RaceSimCentral Год назад

    This turbo button was required to run NASCAR Racing (1994) with the NVIDIA NV1 GPU. Otherwise it would run like crap. The same issues happened again between around 500MHz and 1.1GHz Pentium II/III as well. Many games required fixes by developers to get around it again. Most notable racing game being Grand Prix Legends (1998). It hasn't happened since.

  • @uthmanbaksh3530
    @uthmanbaksh3530 Год назад

    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!

  • @sogerc1
    @sogerc1 Год назад

    Wow, it's been a million years but I finally found out why the computer I worked on in high school had a turbo button. I just kept it pressed in all the time otherwise the computer was ridiculously slow.

  • @alexatkin
    @alexatkin Год назад

    In my experience the Turbo button never worked as designed. Because the speed was always relative to your normal clock speed and the only games I ever had issues with needed a specific speed to function properly, much slower than the turbo button ever reduced it to. This also got worse when the bus speed started to be increased too.

  • @lrdalucardart
    @lrdalucardart Год назад

    Thx, 3decades latter I finally understand wht it's use was for.

  • @johngogo17
    @johngogo17 Год назад

    Can you all please do a video on Windows "Memory Integrity" and "Local Security Authority" features under the Device Security tab? Windows keeps buggin me about it and I don't know if I should enable it or not. A big performance loss would be unfortunate

  • @FinnleysAudioAdventures
    @FinnleysAudioAdventures Год назад

    I had “Learn to Spell” from Spinnaker software. One side of the floppy was for Apple ii and the other was PC compatibles. I had to hit the turbo button on my PC to slow down the CPU or the little dolphin might swim too fast and fly out the side of the Gorilla brand amber CRT

    • @frogz
      @frogz Год назад

      as someone who knows how to spell words: can confirm, it was a nightmare getting the dolphin back into the computer once it got out and started flying around

  • @TumanWK
    @TumanWK Год назад

    What I want to know is why doesn't Microsoft add Hardware monitoring tools to the OS so users can monitor things like temperature and fan speeds with out 3rd party software?

  • @corollavirus4age
    @corollavirus4age Год назад +1

    VTEC Button when!?

  • @AOClaus
    @AOClaus Год назад

    I miss the chunky power switch from back then.

  • @Crackalacking_Z
    @Crackalacking_Z Год назад

    The old PCs with turbo button were actually suppose to operate with turbo enables, if a game ran too fast you needed to disable the turbo to slow things down. Today's speed stepping is still very much a thing, although not to correct misbehaving software, but to lower power consumption, which is very nice for working off battery on notebooks.

  • @Ripskin16
    @Ripskin16 Год назад

    Ah the memories.

  • @ChadwickFerguson
    @ChadwickFerguson Год назад

    I HOPE THEY INCLUDED THE FACT THAT THE MISGNOMER FOR IT SLOWING THE PC DOWN WHEN ACTIVE WAS BECAUSE IT WAS ACTUALLY WIRED WRONG ON THE PIN HEADERS AND TURBO MODE WAS ACTUALLY FASTER THAN NOT TURBO MODE AH YES LETS ARGUE @1:30

  • @mightylink65
    @mightylink65 Год назад

    Most of the time it wouldn't work because the motherboard wouldn't support it or didn't have a connector for it, but when it did all it did was downclock the cpu slightly so the fan would be quieter, it's the same as using quiet fan curves in your bios these days.

  • @7861jamal7861
    @7861jamal7861 Год назад +3

    If only Linus used today's sponsor, Nord VPN.

  • @Custerd1
    @Custerd1 Год назад

    My first PC operated at a blazing 10 MHz. But you could step it down to 8 or 6 MHz in case 10 was too fast for you.... LOL My question is - what happened to the little keys you could lock the on/off switches with? Wouldn't those be an "added level" of security?

  • @VictorKidd53
    @VictorKidd53 Год назад

    They really had to that with the Eagles... that's great

  • @PGGMusic
    @PGGMusic Год назад

    At a moment when the turbobutton had no further purpose anymore, I connected a casefan to the button so I could control the fanspeed between slow and fast.

  • @Pachoslavus
    @Pachoslavus Год назад +3

    Hacked

  • @madprophetus
    @madprophetus Год назад

    Those 2 digit LED displays were manually controlled by a set of jumpers on the LED driver. You could make them say whatever you wanted.

  • @friedrichhartmann3539
    @friedrichhartmann3539 Год назад

    You have primed me well
    When Riley said You know what else is fine?
    This message from our sponsor
    Was my immediate association

  • @cadrecola
    @cadrecola Год назад

    "Programs behaving properly... WITH DECORUM"

  • @TheSimArchitect
    @TheSimArchitect Год назад

    Had? Mine still has one. I also have a 300 digital display number that changes when I press my Turbo button to LOL. 🤪

  • @hishamtajeddine304
    @hishamtajeddine304 Год назад

    i wish i knew that when i had couple of these machines nearly 30 years ago 😂 i used to switch the jumpers on the tiny display module so it shows the highest number possible when clicked 🤣

  • @s.i.m.c.a
    @s.i.m.c.a Год назад

    the clock speed is useless to display - due to power saving states of CPU - where clocks are changed depends on how much tasks you throw at it

  • @JacobLongActingJourney
    @JacobLongActingJourney Год назад

    Love the superbowl reference 😂

  • @wolfejar
    @wolfejar Год назад

    486dx was my first computer. And yes I’d had a turbo button!

  • @munkykng416
    @munkykng416 Год назад

    I needed it on for rebel assault 2, man those were the days

  • @itsdeonlol
    @itsdeonlol Год назад

    Thank Riley!