Why Did Old PCs Have Turbo Buttons?
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2015
- Looking back at the turbo button! Personal computers came with these things for years, then they just disappeared. But they're not forgotten.
To clarify further: the turbo button does not overclock your CPU or make it go faster than its intended speed. Even if pressing your turbo button made things faster, that just meant it was allowing you to use your normal CPU speed. The initial function of the turbo button is just a matter of which method the PC booted up in: turbo enabled or disabled. This is what I talked about with the BIOS settings at 03:15.
It made sense to have the default boot setting be "turbo disabled" for most manufacturers, because otherwise you'd have lots of people using their computer at a slower speed all the time, not knowing they had to press the turbo button to run with the advertised performance!
Turbo buttons are no longer needed because programmers stopped designing software that depended on clock speed to run correctly, and people by and large stopped using older software that still did. There are exceptions to this of course, but for the most part the turbo button ceased being a requirement due to popular software of the late-90's running fine on any CPU. Nowadays, there are games that depend on frame rates to run their physics correctly, but this is another issue entirely.
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I have a old desktop. I always press the turbo button. Then, one day it broke. I looked inside and realised that the turbo button connects to nowhere...
like the door-close buttons in the elevator all over again.
Lukas Böck I'm still can't believe some people believe those are purposely installed to be placebo buttons
What the hell xD
@@lrrrruleroftheplanetomicro6881 I read somewhere that the placebo button applies in the US only. Most, if not all, elevators in Europe (and presumably everywhere else) have fully functional close door buttons.
There's a law in the US that says elevator doors must be open for at least three seconds after it opens to make time for disabled users. To comply with this law, US elevator manufacturers kept the button but they straight up removed the button's function or make the closing delay so long it's practically useless (same as waiting for the door to close by itself).
@@this_is_patrick They're fully functioning on the US too. I don't know where this urban legend came from.
"What should we call this button that slows down the clock speed to play older games?"
"Turbo"
"Excellent."
Would be cute to have one labelled it the "snail" button
Imagine there might be a parallel universe where buttons are labelled rabbit and turtle.
I was a kid when I first saw the turbo button. I just assumed it made the computer run faster somehow. Incredible that it actually slows the computer down 😣
Love what you do btw 👍
All the best
It depended on the configuration, but some of them were configured so that pressing the button would lead to the machine operating at full capacity. Mine was like that, I'd have to deactivate the Turbo in order to get sound working in one of the King's Quest games, whereas activating it would cause a glitch which prevented sound. IIRC, there was a display of the speed, which made it clear which speed the machine was operating at.
Odd seeing you here!
I thought it didn't do shit. Turns out, I wasn't far off.
At some point I had a 486 computer with case that had a turbo button and a small LCD next to it that would go from 33 to 66 MHz, I think. I always had turbo engaged, but I don't recall any dramatic performance improvements. I suspect it might have been placebo or maybe it was actually wired as it should, that is, turbo meant faster.
Maaan, I remember my uncle's 1996 PC had this thing. I always wondered if this will actually make computer more efficient at games, but at the same time, I was afraid of touching it as if it was a disguised self-destruct button or something. When I finally got my first PC in the Christmas of 1999 I was like - where's the turbo button! All the PCs I've seen so far had'em!
Over seventeen years later - here's the answer.
Cool
pressing "Turbo" button actually "slows down" your processing power...
GENIUS!!!!!!!
A genius fix is just flipping the cable 180 degrees so the switch polarity is reversed. That way things will indeed speed up.
Another method would be to tilt your computer in different directions to find out which way the computational energy is flowing. By tilting it, you assist its speed by allowing gravity to work with it. You would prop up maybe a wood block under it to keep it in that position.
Mister Rogers Har har. My reply was a serious one though. ;)
the clickbait of the 80's-95's
+LogiForce86 Wouldn't work with the one I had. The turbo button had no polarity, it was pure on/off. But at least that particular 8088 motherboard had the sense right. Turbo on would run at 10MHz, off at 4.77MHz, this could be reversed with a hotkey combo, but wouldn't persist because there was no storable BIOS settings, just the traditional 8 DIP switches for things like graphics card and video resolution.
I used the turbo button to get through the harder parts of Aladdin.
Slowing the PC down made it easier to jump to the next moving platform.
It as too difficult for 9 year old me...
Ha, that's a great unintended use.
The origin of bullet time in gaming. hahaha
Maurice h built in cheats
now you HAVE to go back and play it again without cheating
Maurice h lol
Now: I can’t play this game, my PC is too slow
Before: I can’t play this game, my PC is too fast
The turbo button lives now as the windows 10 game mode
Perhaps more accurately as Windows Compatibility Modes.
You can have turbo switches on some msi gaming motherboard that would overvolt your cpu and overclock it.
weeaboo trash
@@XRemARx congratulations, you just replied to a 1 year old comment
So what your saying is the turbo button dosent work
Damn, I actually expected it to be some sort of press-to-enable-overclocking button.
Simon Christensen I thought the same. One button overclock would be awesome!
Simon Christensen CheffBryan I built a PC a while back using a Gigabyte motherboard featuring exactly that:
i.imgur.com/D8A2KVd.jpg
Lazy Game Reviews I completely forgot about that. Now I remember when it started being introduced a couple of years back.
Some graphics cards also came with a BIOS switch/button on the card itself, so you could change to a BIOS that had an overclocked profile - but those seem to have disappeared completely.
Lazy Game Reviews One word: Want.
Simon Christensen Some motherboards do have a feature like that though it's usually activated automatically.
Reminds me of an old Walkman I had back in the day. The ordinary default sound was what was actually on the tape, but they built an EQ into the thing that cut out half the bass so it would sound thin and wimpy. And they added a big yellow "Bass BOOST" button. When you pressed it, it was suddenly full, rich, and the regular, default sound. The bass boost button basically shut off the -20db on the 100hz frequency. And all this was done just so they could sell it as a "feature" that gave you superior sound.
Kind of like when stores jack up the price of a product from $100 to $120, and then put a sticker that says %20 off, just to make you feel like you're getting a great deal.
kevnar Wait, are you saying early 90s me got fooled by a marketing trick? Damn! I worked HARD for that walkman back then!
kevnar 20% off 120 is actually 96.
BoloYung 20% off *100* is 80. The situation being discussed was a product initially costing $100 having the base price marked up to $120 and then being "discounted" back to $100 so the retailer can claim to be selling it at a discount of 20%. 20% of the "base price" of $120 would actually be $96, so I was pointing out that error. For a product to cost $100 dollars when at a discount of 20%, it would have to have a base price of $125.
Please make sure you understand the context and comment you are replying to before commenting.
BoloYung I understood his point, and I had inferred that the specific situation was that the base price was being raised so the original price could be retained but stated to be a discount. It was not explicitly stated, true, but I do not think it was an unreasonable interpretation. Also, I cannot think of any interpretations where it was relevant that 20% off 100 is 80, because reducing the original price to an actually lower price would be honest.
Beats by Dr Dre does the same thing today! In computers and smartphones with Beats audio implemented in them there is a built in EQ profile that actually DECREASES the highs and the lows from the original sound when Beats audio feature is deactivated. But then they take it a step further by INCREASING the highs and the lows Beats is turned on. Marques Brownlee does a very informative coverage on this on his RUclips channel
As a naive young man, I was always afraid to press that button because I imagined if I press that TURBO button, it will phase and stretch me out to another plane of TRON-esque digital existence at high speed!
good that you didn't as it would instead have teleported you
when i was a child i saw a description for a game where there was an enemy that would turn the player into a piece of cheese, and i thought it meant me and not the on-screen character. needless to say i avoided playing it
When I was a little kid in 1981 and saw my first home "Pong" system in my aunt's house, I actually thought that lots of other people were watching the game on their TVs, since TVs only ever showed something that many other TVs could and did pick up.
The digit display does one thing that none of the other solutions did: it made it unequivocally clear which state is faster, in a landscape where turbo buttons could either speed up or show down a computer. Even to someone who barely knows what the button does and who is using the computer for the first time.
I was thinking the same thing when he mentioned it. Gotta love those two digit mhz speeds.
I remember in high school, some kids talking about a new computer that was going to be over 100 mhz. I said that would be impossible. My computer at the time, a Mac Plus, ran at 8 mhz.
For me as a kid, I had no idea what that number meant, it was just fun switching between the modes... also had no idea about what the Turbo button really does.
Yeah eventually you knew it was doing something on PCs in the 90s
except display was in no way tied to what the M/B did with the switch signal, so it could be (mistakenly) programmed backwards. in fact, since about late 486-era I've seen turbo button being not connected to anything at all, and it just became an anxiety toy to press-unpress while waiting for something to load... to reflect that, I've seen segmented displays configured to something abstract, like [] / --
@@ffmfg Sure. The button could also (mistakenly) be wired to short your computer. But it's really on a computer manufacturer not to (mistakenly) wire things up incorrectly.
I still remember the long lecture from my IT teacher about not pushing that button as it'd damage the computers. It even got my parents dragged in to see the head master about my use of it.
+Sissy So the schools had computers with Turbo buttons?
Cythil Most were RM Nimbus 186 machines but they had a few stand alone 286 & 386 machines that had turbo buttons.
Sissy
Well I think is silly if they have those buttons and are so worried about it. But then again there often worse buttons on a computer for kids to play with. Anyway I can not say I know which is best practice in this case.
(But to me it seems it pretty clear that they exaggerate the dangers of the turbo button.)
Sissy All that means is that your IT teacher was too lazy to open the computer up and disconnect the switch...
Brett Bates That wouldn't of been the IT teachers job, it'd also of invalidated any warranty or support contract.
Better and more accurate to say my IT teacher didn't actually know much about... well... IT.
I miss the old on/off switches. These switched the power cord directly. These were snappy and loud push-button switches needed to be pressed strongly by your thumb. It was a greating feeling of starting a powerful machine. You actually feeled the very mechanic switching process and then the fans started up slowly. After the fans were up, a *beeeeeep* said, that everything is fine with bios configuration.
Today, it is just a tiny silent button that fires a signal to the mainboard where I think: Did I press it deep enough? Is it on? *press it once more to be sure*
Well, you could always flick the switch on the PSU every time you turn your PC off if you want, it'd mean you'd have to flick it on every time you wanted to turn the PC on. As for the bios beep, quite a lot of motherboards still have a small built in or detachable speaker for that. Also as for the fans you could always get a louder cooling system to sort that out.
Indeed, I know that.
I turn off the power of my PC using a wall switch (it switches the socket where the PC is plugged in) :-D.
It is not the same as the big old power button at frontside of a PC. It isn't the same old feeling ;-).
Hah yeah I was just thinking that. I want more physical buttons. Keyboards should use toggle switches for numlock, capslock, mute, etc
Yeah, but when you accidentally wired it the wrong way while building the PC (as those often came disconnected), it wasn't exactly fun to turn it on for the first time ;) But I guess that's a mistake you only ever made once ;) After that, you were very careful to triple check the wiring ;) (I know I did.)
I know im late, But my 2009 laptop does this, except that it still uses a button, When you start it, you can hear the fans and if everything is ok, then the *beeep* comes in. Sadly the beeep isnt comming in as it recently had a CPU problem and idk how to fix it.
Who else had a case where the turbo wasn’t even connected.
My high school job was putting together PCs right at the end of the Turbo era. Many of the motherboards at this point didn't actually have a Turbo header, but we would always connect the light or set up the display as best as possible. The most annoying ones were where you needed to set a bunch of jumpers to make the display show the two clock speeds.
I had a 486 computer with case that had a turbo button and a small LCD next to it and it would go from 33 to 66 MHz, I think. I always had turbo engaged, but I don't recall any dramatic performance improvements. I don't know if it was connected to anything, but the post from Keith suggests it was connected to the motherboard and coded with jumpers. Interesting.
I took me all the way until the end of this video to realize I was just staring at panning images of old pc cases. Insane.
I normally detest such videos but LGR's good commentary made me not even realize.
Turbo doesn't feel like a real word anymore.
Declan Kennard Tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub tub.
what about super
+Negan that's Latin for above or beyond.
But as with every word, if you repeat it often enough it will lose all meaning... usa usa usa usa :'/
John T. DiFool there's acually a word for that effect,lol.
madscientistshusta semantic satiation
You know, as someone fairly new to pc gaming and existence, in general, I can honestly say that your videos are frogging riveting. I've been binging on your stuff, and everything is so damn perfect.
Happy to hear it :)
+The Dollar Guy *cries*
New to PC Gaming and already using a JC Denton avatar?
Your taste is augmented.
DoctorWeeTodd Yeah, I built a PC, so I could play some classic games.
I think you made a typo, you clearly meant "frogging ribbeting" ;)
I got my first PC in late 94 and It did not have a turbo button nor a keylock. I remember feeling cheated because all the PCs I knew had a turbo button, and my disappointment lasted for a really long time..
This channel is my a.s.m.r. It is very relaxing here. CertifiablyIngame 's Star Trek playthroughs are my #2 relax. :-) Keep up the good work!
Turbo slowed it down ? All this time I didnt realize it.
Wall me neither, I thought it made it faster! I used to have it turned on most times!
on mine it made it faster, confirmed by clock speed on the LCD display
Look, the time is never slowing down. Slowing down the processor is actually speed-up the user, by the computer. It is a same thing as time will slow down when you speed-up your brain.
It didn't. The PC ran slower when the button was *not* pressed.
All depends on the manufacture, some buttons made it faster, some slower.. as presented in the video above :P
DOS Box does the same thing by allowing you to adjust the cycles count to affect the speed of many games.
***** i had software that adjusted cycles whit way less overhead :) at least worked fine on a 386.
Michael Sriqui there are also programs for DOS for doing that so you can get specific clock speeds.
LOL I had one of those pc's with a turbo button and clock speed display!
My brother told me I could only use turbo for a few minutes a day or else the pc would catch fire...:(
This is my favorite video of yours. I remember seeing this on my friends computer seeing the clock speed counter going down and the program lagging and getting furious when she still claimed it sped things up. So much so I went looking for months for some explanation of it. Even when I picked up a manual on the particular computer he had he changed his tune and said they had modified it.
When I was a kid I always pressed the turbo button thinking it made the computer faster. Guess I was wrong!!
Me too. Funnily enough, I only ever used the computer to play old DOS games like Dyna Blaster or Scorched Earth (and it was an 80486, so slowing down was definitely necessary), so I guess it actually worked out well.
sadly, I did that for a long time too!
I think I did that too! What awesomeness did I miss in my youth? :( LOL.
The button on my first PC (back in 1994) made the display go from "66" to "33". Wonder if that was the actual speed, certainly felt that way when playing Tetris. Even in"turbo"-mode, lvl 1 felt like lvl 6, and normal was like lvl 9....
That would have been the clock speed.
The family computer had one of these when I was in elementary school. Even had the green LED displaying the speed. I remember to this day: low speed 8 MHz, full speed 133 MHz.
@waffeltek ._.
i just found your channel today and i must say your videos are very well written and delivered, making them easy to follow (Y)
I believe they should be called "turtle".
BAHHH! You missed a detail on why Turbo Buttons existed in the first place; Copy protection!
A number of commercial business applications had bad sectors written into the diskette that would purposefully slow down the read times and the program checked for that read rate. With CPUs too fast, it would trip the copy protection even if it was a legitimate disk. This is why it was a button specifically, so you could run your computer in slower mode to get past the protection, then flip it into turbo mode so you could cut spreadsheets faster.
But I can't begrudge you not bringing that up since this is a show about games, not boring business software from the early 80s :)
Actually that is really interesting
Would make sense to cater to the people that actually make money and not just gaems
@@Seth2378 what difference does it make, money is money
LGR, the only man in history who can make a six minute video about buttons and have it still be incredibly interesting.
Good grief, almost all your videos take me back.
Love it.
"Whatever you do, just don't press that button" they said to me as a kid!
And then I did... and then the halon system went off and just like that our field trip to the computer company was over!
That friend of yours who blamed his computer's bad performance on "Compaq making crappy computers." while keeping the Turbo button pushed at all times while playing all the modern games had to the same friend that I had who I desperately tried to get to turn off his turbo button. He believed "Turbo" was the "Overclock" button. *facepalm*.
BlackburnBigdragon We've all had one of those friends, haha.
BlackburnBigdragon what drives me crazy about that mentality is not that they're wrong about a thing, it's that they refuse to even consider that they might be wrong and refuse to literally even lift a finger to test their assumptions.
Yes. You have to question why the hell the manufacturers chose to call a feature to slow a computer down "TURBO". Really???
Frankly, I think that they were all afraid to put a button that said "Slow Down" or "Lower speed" or anything related to that on the computer as that would make the average consumer who looked at the computer think, "Oh. This is a slow computer. It has a "Slow" button." You KNOW this was the mentality behind the "Turbo" button.
BlackburnBigdragon Is not our fault. I learn to use, and assamble computers by myself. No books, no clases no nothing. How is suposed to know that a turbo buton does exactly the oposite that it says?
I had no idea this is how it worked! I remember having the same issues as your friend when I was about that age, though I did have the sense to try with the button off xD
Whoa, holy crap. I got kicked in the nuts with nostalgia from this video. The image you used of the 16MHz 386 is the EXACT same case one of my very first PCs sported. It might've even been my very first PC, but I don't entirely recall. Might've been the 2nd. Never thought I'd see that again!
I just gave away our old PC from 1993. The case was the same as the one at 4:23 that showed the clock speed. The computer still worked but I didn't have a use for it. I enjoy watching your videos LGR, gives me a nostalgia from my childhood!
I used to switch it on and off while watching the ending cascade of Solitaire.
Slooooooow booouuuuunce... bouuunce... bounce.... (TURBO) bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt you win!
The Examined Life (of Gaming) I did the same with screensavers!
brb ordering a turbo button
ok
waffeltek thanks
If the turbo button presses its self during delivery the delivery vehicle will go into first gear.
Did ya get it
My first two computers had a Turbo button and I never understood why it was there. Tjhanks for shedding some light on the subject ;)
Thanks for the enlightening video, I had no idea! Imagine using turbo instead of something sensible like "game mode". Incredible genius!
Make it stop, I can't take any more beige plastic.
You would hate my next build, then. I'm making a beige-box design that even has a beige panel to hide the window.
If I ever get around to building a gaming PC I want it styled like the computers we had in school in the 90s.
+George Rosebush Those where white, haha. I don't know what kind of crappy plastic they used, but it just turns depressing veige colour after a few years
Polikarpov Mosca
From what I remember, they began life as little off-white gremlins, I don't recall seeing them as the ultra pure bright white you see on modern plastics.
+Polikarpov Mosca
It's ABS. ABS takes UV damage from sunlight, which is why a lot of old computers are that awful yellowish color now.
My LIFE needs a Turbo button! **YAWN**
+MetalJesusRocks You need to slow down? :P
+MetalJesusRocks What about a button on a Turbo Duo??
+MetalJesusRocks My life needed turbo buttons on my NES when i played silver surfer ....
God Metal Jesus is Here :'O
Life DOES have a turbo button, they call it caffeine or if you're an MLG life hacker you use cocaine :D
4:20 I had that very desktop case back in the 90s. Thanks for the jaunt onto memory lane, LGR!
I was confused in another video what you meant by the turbo button. Thanks! I'm not a computer technical person. So much stuff to wrap your head around.
My first PC had a Turbo button on it but I never knew what it did. I should have known it slowed down the computer! Duh!
***** Don't blame yourself, it is counter-intuitive by nature to have named the slow down button as turbo. In order to find that out, you would have had to test it out with a specific software, with turbo and without. Games are usually a good way to do that.
Jean-Nicholas Charest and when you have an lcd panel thats says 166 with turbo off and 200 with turbo on, you asume it works faster too.
Leonardo Baez I remember those. I didn't really think much of it really until today. That said, it's still a pretty interesting concept to explore.
+DreamcasticChannel Well like LGR said on some computers it did speed up the computer. As it should to. I mean why would you rig it in reverse? Urgh... Do not let Engineers design user interfaces. Not even something as simple as a button! (Marketing people might have been partly to blame to..)
(And just look at early cars! Or the control centre of Three Mile Islands power plant. No darn Interaction Designer got even close to those when they where first designed.)
Cythil yet, they still do and it's usually clunky as balls because of it.
So basically it applies an underclock.
Yep!
Last time I saw one it, I think, underclocked the FSB. It was a 486 DX/2 that ran broadcast automation software and nothing else. I never owned a computer with one (First x86 machine was 486 SX in 1992)
He did say later ones sped up didnt he ?
You know the "speed" display LED didn't actually measure the speed, right? You could set the LEDs to anything when you configured the case. Just a lot of jumpers.
Each LED segment could be jumpered to be on in Turbo mode, on in Slow mode, or on all the time. And if you wanted off all the time, remove the jumper.
So the LEDs just toggled between any 2 displays. You could put your initials on there if you liked.
I suppose the LEDs fell out of fashion about when CPUs went past 1GHz, it was getting to the point where you'd need too many LEDs.
He said that some manufacturers configured it so that the default was for the PC to run in underclock mode, and pressing the Turbo button took it back to its correct CPU speed. So it was only speeding up in the sense of running at its proper speed.
Early floppy disk protection software *required* the cpu to run at 4.77 MHz, which is why the turbo button was used. Once the protection had been run, the application could then be run at the full speed of the computer.
"He was like 8" so I assume you were like 8 as well and you knew the inherit function of the turbo button? Kudos!
Thanks for finally explaining the turbo button to me. Growing up I just knew it was a button that I never touched. So next question why all the keylocks? Where they just lock out switches or did that have another purpose?
John Stevens the key locks prevent the computer from booting as a security/anti-theft measure.
Ah thanks. That's what I figured but never really knew, I was just thinking way bother with the keylock when you could just open the side panel and disable it.
+John Stevens That's also why most PCs also had the place to put a lock on the side panel so people couldn't get in. Of course you could use bolt cutters, but at that point, they're pretty damn determined to get in anyways.
Fun fact about turbo buttons on controllers: as I understand it, those too actually "slow things down", alternating controller input while the button is held down instead of sending an uninterrupted electric signal (which many games are coded to ignore) like a regular button.
Regular (held down): -------------------------------------
Turbo (held down): -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
I used to play a game called Harley Davidson on my 486 dx2 and i had to press the turbo button on the case so i was able to play the game. I later had a Pentium 200 and coudln't even pass the 1st gear. One more note,I love watching your videos and its inspiring me to go back to my old computer and enjoy some retro gaming. Thank you for all these great videos!!!
Love your channel. It makes me so nostalgic!
Neat, now I know the legend behind the Turbo button.
Now what the fuck were those weird lock keyholes for?
The lock disables the keyboard, preventing the PC from being used without the key as security measure.
(Or if you mean the little oval holes in laptops, those are for attaching a specific kind of lock, usually connected to a loop of wire that you can wrap around something to prevent people from stealing the laptop.)
SEE YAI AYE Since on most computers, the "key" was just a metal cylinder with a single cutout (so same key for all machines), it was usually referred to as a "child lock". Even if you did replace it with a high-security lock, it was super-easy to hotwire (IIRC open circuit meant "unlocked", so just disconnecting the lock would unlock the PC), and so provided no actual security.
The hole it's actually a barrel lock where the key would switch functionally of the motherboard on or off. The lock was wired to the motherboard as a switch and could be enabled in the motherboard's bios settings.
Bear in mind there were no lock screens back in the day. Most of the keyboard locks were complete rubbish but I ran across a few PCs with fairly decent ones.
I got a used IBM PC Server 300 once. It didn't have a reset button, so I connected the keyboard lock to the reset pins on the motherboard instead. :)
4:48 "386DX-40" "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95." It'll potentially run, but I wouldn't exactly call that "designed for"
+Captain Southbird Techically could run it but it would have been slow
Nicholas Curran Yup. Official minimum specs were 386DX w/ 4MB of RAM. I think the manufacturer of this machine was ... optimistic. :P
Captain Southbird 40mhz win95? LOL that'd be painful :P
+sinephase Not really. Ran Windows 95 on a 486SX 33MHz
I first ran Win95 on 486DX - the deluxe model :p
wow i liked some of those old model computers with the turbo button ...never saw one before ..cool...the gold gateway the bond.....love to see you do a show on thosr ones
wow man you just answered a question wich turtured me for dozens of years! thanks.
This video is turbotastic!!!
Oh hey larry
TURBOTAAA *Dies*
THE TURBO BUTTON SLOWED DOWN COMPUTERS!?!?! God damnit i wish i knew that in the 90's. My computer always ran like shit cause so we left the turbo on all the time.
It has been a long time, but from what I remember the first motherboard to come up with a Turbo Button was the American Research Corp XT motherboard called ARC X-Turbo. When you pressed the button it would overclock from 4.77Mhz to 7.14Mhz. I remember building XT clones back then using this motherboard. They came with a very nice Logo to put on the Clone PC XT case. Made a lot of money in those days building clone PCs.
Such excellent commentary and insight about this. Really enjoyed this video.
Turbo Button is like Blast Processing for the Sega Genesis
Except the other way around.
Didn't Nintendo make those claims to fuck with Sega
Cole Jones no, sega advertise the genesis with that slogan, nintendo only won the race because they had a advantage, you get the picture
They "winned" the race but not by much, no matter how you try to compare SEGA vs Nintendo consoles, is always a draw.
Saturn and Dreamcast can be equally/better than N64 and viceversa for example.
(Except the Master System, is the only one I will never care).
Sega had Europe though
Worse choice a label ever. Turbo = slow??? So stupid.
But you are right about the display of the CPU speed......I miss that in modern computers.
@dandanthetaximan nice
Some over the top high end Graphics cards have displays like that, and turbo buttons built in
Don’t listen to the guy in the video. He doesn’t understand the function of the turbo button. I grew up with computers that had them, and was never confused like this guy.
Turbo, of course, means fast. When they came out with the faster processors, they had to have a way to make them compatible with older software, so they made a way to turn off the turbo mode. They called it the turbo button, and pushing it would toggle the turbo mode on or off. There was usually a light to indicate which mode you were in, but you could always tell by how fast or slow your software ran.
@@ethanlamoureux5306 that's literally just a rephrasing of what lgr said though
@@scuzzySCSI No, he said turbo = slow. I'm saying it’s the exact opposite, turbo = fast. It’s a toggle switch: you don’t say it’s crazy or confusing that the power button turns the power off, do you? No, because you recognize the power button turns the power on or off. Likewise the turbo button turns fast mode on or off. That is not a rephrasing, that is just what should have been said in this video from the very start!
The best TURBO button is the one on K.I.T.T.
Naw, Airwolf turbo button is the best one
@@1988dgs Yeah, that electronic squeal was awesome
Great info. I just stumbled onto your channel and have subscribed. Nice videos, well explained.
I grew up in early 2000s seeing the Turbo button as something that actually did make things go faster...
... Then again, I almost never left it on for a while.
its a good thing I grew up just after these stopped being a thing. There is no way 5 year old me could resist pressing that any time (and then question why I'm getting yelled at for slowing the computer down anytime I'm on it)
8 year old me insisted on having it on at all times...because...megahertz...since I was the only one knowing at least something about computers I made the calls^^
Thanks for explaining this. I dont really recall the turbo button back in the day. I think its hilarious that it actually ran the pc slower. Welcome to bizarro world. Love the story of your friend.
Our schools computers had that in middle school, and that was only back in 2011. I've been graduated, but it shows how much school ever updates their technology 🙄so thanks, you helped me realized how old those computers actually were.
4:57 that power switch is gorgeous. I'd love to have that kind of switch on my case.
I also miss actual switches on things... Sigh...
I loved the turbo buttons. Nowadays my vacuum cleaner has a turbo button too. If you switch it off, the vacuum comes practically useless.
*cough cough* Dyson *cough cough*
Grew up with T.U.R.B.O buttons but definitely needed a refresher course for some missing details :) Thank you.
Excellent video. Still explaining turbo buttons to this day
Man those were the days. Thanks for the post.
You bet!
Damn, I wish I knew the TURBO button was actually used to slow things down *BACK THEN*!!! D:
My first used computer, a Packard Bell 386 SX 25Mhz had a "Turbo" function which was accessed by the control-alt-numpad plus/minus keys. It slowed it down to 8Mhz and brought it back to its original speed. This was back in 1992-1993 for me, that is, and I think it had a key lock as well.
it is only on LGR channel possible we all remain glued to monitor watching video about one button :) Cool video as always. :)
OK after seeing all those photos, the word "TURBO" doesn't look like a word anymore
I don't understand why they didn't reverse the functionality of the turbo button in the first place. Why deliberately make it confusing? How hard is it to reverse the way a toggle works?
JimPlaysGames I dont know what Clint is talking about, perhaps it was a USA thing. Here with the Turbo button pressed the PC run at normal full speed and when depressed it would slow down.
***** fine
JimPlaysGames All PCs I've seen have it hooked up like that.... though most were custom built. A case with a turbo button might come with two connectors for it, so it is rather easy to reverse the button to make it work however you like it to.
howdareyou66 Very possible.
JimPlaysGames I'm pretty sure that's why they put the MHz display on the front.
Thanks for answering this question I've been wondering for the past 25+ years! I never had a Turbo button, but I did have friends who did, and nobody ever knew what it really did. Obviously the assumption was that it made the computer run faster, so the typical thing to do was to have it on all the time. Funny how we never noticed any increase in performance.
Thanks...that makes sense.
I remember when I had my first PC it was a Pentium 133.
I was taught never press the turbo button, but when I did the display showed 100.
I thought I did something wrong...lol
LGR... I love your videos man!
Crispe1 Thank you!
2:17 druaga1's ultimate dos machine. clever.
THEREDCAP yeah, deal with it. 😎
[throwing SSDs at the computer screen]
HOW DO I GET THIS
ive used and loved many of the cases you showed, it makes me feel old but at the same time that those years were good and maybe the persue of faster and better pc could just be more enjoyable
The Turbo button is making a comeback of sorts in 2019. The Acer Helios 300 laptop has one, and it does what it says on the tin.
4:10 I have that exact same keyboard! Although mine has a couple of missing key caps but I'm typing this comment on it right now!
we need a “”BEAST MODE”” Button
оr "RELEASE THE KRAKEN"
I started working with PCs in1985, I remember the Turbo button. It never seemed to do anything. I had no idea it slowed it DOWN! Remember loading DOS from a big floopy disk that actually flopped? What fun.
Possibly the most inspiring Turbo PC button history-type video I have EVER seen.
Hey, I've seen Knight Rider, I know Turbo means fast!
You do know they just sped up the footage of a slow moving car, right? So essentially it was slow :) . Oops, I just spoiled your childhood memories!
Pretty quickly it also meant jump over moving trains and shit
Edit: shit I just realized how old that comment was
@@coverweel2235 Knight Rider will never be old!!!
"Well whatever he was like 8." Made me laugh hard.
I /was/ completely unaware of the usage of that thing. Thank you!
You just blew my mind. Never knew what the turbo was doing exactly. Now I'm thinking I was limiting my PC performance for years.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a shifter on your PC? Downshift to put it into low power mode to cool it down. Upshift for gaming power!
Some laptops do this. Down clock your computer to save battery and overclock when it needs power when plugged in. My mac does this :P
+Long Dong Oh, that's cool, but it's done via software, right? I actually meant like a metal and leather shift knob like in a sports car, but built into your tower or your keyboard. :D
fountainhead I'm pretty sure some MSI laptops has this feature on a touch button by the screen.
fountainhead If I ever wanted to build my own custom pc, I would totally try to do that, lol.
Intel SpeedStep and AMD Cool'n'Quiet do something like this. The clock speed is constantly changing depending on the load (like 800 MHz idle and ramps up to full speed when gaming; but you can limit the max speed in Windows power settings). And theres also Turbo Boost...
put a button on your pc call it turbo and when u press it your overclock setting active :)
Wow, long time without seeing a Turbo button. I still have somewhere a keyboard with the Turbo button. I know I’m commenting 3 years after this video was released, but is worth the shot
I love the way you justify the reasons we do things. I think it's good to get a reminder sometimes that it's fine to enjoy lights in a case (or whatever), just because you do and whether they have any practical purpose is irrelevant and doesn't matter either way.
I've had a brilliant idea for designing a child friendly case: Your child needs to do his homework, but Minecraft or whatever other crap young kids like to play is calling to him. So you build a PC with a Turbo button that actually unlocks the proper speed of the machine, enabling it to play games, but turning the Turbo button off slows the PC down to a crawl, good enough only for word processors *wink wink*. You keep the turbo button under a special lock that requires a key, when your son has completed his homework, simply unlock the Turbo button and let him play!
But that would actually require paying attention to your kids, nobody wants to do that. I'm kidding, that's actually a pretty good idea.
One moment of silence for the turbo button please.
*Waits a few seconds* Okay, one moment passed.
People would die of heart attack if you told them back then in the future cpu speed runs in GHz