Turbo Switch

[550M]

kind of an outdated question, but what exactly is the turbo switch on those old computers supposed to do?

 

[Exiler]

Well when I used to press it, from 33Mhz for a 486 it goes to 66Mhz, thing did speed up. though I don't know, why it needed that, I mean somehow the button controlled the BUS Speed???

I really don't know about this since THEN I didn't know anything about computers. I only stated to know after a P166, by that time the 486 were long dead.

 

[550M]

same here. i got some old computers now, and i don't know a bunch of stuff about them. just the new stuff. if thats what it does i wonder why there is even a switch. wouldn't you want it on all the time?

 

[Carnil]

With the really old computers, like the 8086 and 80286 computers, game programmers would often assume that the clock speed was the same on all computers that their game would be running on. At the time, it was a good assumption, and it let them get slightly more performance out of the computer. When faster computers came along, the games would run too fast to be playable, so a number of companies added the "turbo" switch to slow things down. Turning on the "turbo" setting would make the computer run at design speed, while turning it off would underclock it.

 

[550M]

ahh, cool. thanks for the info. should be useful when i do some seti machines