old pc's - turbo button?

Van Hellseek · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:20

just bought a full system for a fiver to have a play around with

it has a button marked "turbo" on the front of the case... what does it do?

gam3r · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:25

one way to find out...push it

warpspeed!

Trill · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:27

A leftover from machines of five to ten years ago, the turbo switch still remains on many cases, even though it really serves no purpose any more. In the early days of the PC, there was only IBM, and there were only a handful of different speeds a PC could run at. Early software was written by programmers who believed they were writing it to run on a machine of a specific speed. When newer, faster machines would come out, some of this software (especially games) would stop working properly because it would run too fast. Turning off the "turbo" function of the PC (which meant anything that made it run faster than an IBM of a particular era) would make the machine run slower so this software would work. In essence, it was a "compatibility mode" feature, to slow down the machine for older software.

Now, there are dozens of different combinations of processor types and speeds. Software cannot rely on knowing what the speed of the machine is, so most programs use speed-detection algorithms to determine how fast the machine is. The turbo button no longer serves any useful purpose, and in fact on many motherboards there either isn't anywhere to connect it, or there is a place but the motherboard does nothing when you press the button. The best use for this button is to never touch it, or use it for some other purpose. Some older machines will still slow down when the button is pressed, and if you press it by accident your machine will lose performance; it can be surprisingly hard to track down the problem, since it seems that the front of the machine is the last place anyone appears to notice anything. You can correct this problem if you find yourself doing this frequently.

Fortunately, the turbo button has all but disappeared from modern system cases, especially newer NLX, ATX-family, and WTX form factor systems.

Werewolf · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:38

I remember some of the 486's used to have it, and the fancier ones would also have an LED display prowdly showing it's current speed as 99 or 66

The memories

Ex-RoNiN · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:46

Werewolf said:
I remember some of the 486's used to have it, and the fancier ones would also have an LED display prowdly showing it's current speed as 99 or 66

The memories

Pffff, mine showed 16 and 8....was a 286 tho

My 486 showed 66 and 16 :cool:

Van Hellseek · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:50

this one is..

150mhz
64mb stealth diamond gfx card (or something like that)
128mb ram
409mb hard drive
old cd-rom i'm guessing 4x or something.
200 watt psu
win98se

i reckon it was pretty good for a fiver!

lemonkettaz · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:52

cool a turbo button.

am sure my dad worked with a one that went from 33mhz to 66mhz at the push of a button.

...a push of a button and a few bags of coal

manoz · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:55

That graphics card has pretty high memory for such a slow computer. Mine was only like 8MB or something :confused:

Van Hellseek · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:58

manoz said:
That graphics card has pretty high memory for such a slow computer. Mine was only like 8MB or something

yeah, it's a PCI card. tbh, i'm kinda suprised it has any PCI slots at all! was expecting just ISA.

at least now i can put my soundblaster 128 and my tnt2m64 gfx card in it.

though i'm really not sure which is the better card :confused:

semi-pro waster · 5 Sep 2006 at 21:52

I'm think the TNT2 is the better card given the information provided but if you could find out the chipset of the Diamond then someone could say for sure.

Also I don't think the turbo button will do anything for that PC, as far as I am aware the turbo function was only in use up to 486 level and I don't think they went as high as 150mhz(100mhz was about the limit if memory serves) so it looks like you have an old Pentium, with or without MMX I can't say right now but none of them used the turbo function. You might be able to check with something like CPU-Z, at least for my peace of mind if nothing else

I'd be happy to be corrected by someone who knows more but I suspect the case will just be from a rebuilt machine, I had an old P120 that was built in a 486s chassis with a non-working turbo button.

ErNciLator · 5 Sep 2006 at 22:03

wow always wondered what they were for

and thinking about it, there was a dos game that ran too fast

agw_01 · 5 Sep 2006 at 22:08

Ahhhhhh, good old turbo buttons!

My dad had an Escom 486 dx2/66 with a turbo button.

The biggest difference was on a game called CD-Man, basically a fancy version of Pacman.

With the turbo mode switched off, the game ran normally. Press the turbo button and after a few seconds the light would come on and the game would go into hyper mode.

I remember saying "OMG that's fast"

samcat · 5 Sep 2006 at 22:29

semi-pro waster said:
Also I don't think the turbo button will do anything for that PC, as far as I am aware the turbo function was only in use up to 486 level and I don't think they went as high as 150mhz(100mhz was about the limit if memory serves)

Unless you could solder clock crystals

OLD school overclocking

Those were the days.

Sam C

Tom|Nbk · 5 Sep 2006 at 22:44

agw_01 said:
Ahhhhhh, good old turbo buttons!

My dad had an Escom 486 dx2/66 with a turbo button.

The biggest difference was on a game called CD-Man, basically a fancy version of Pacman.

With the turbo mode switched off, the game ran normally. Press the turbo button and after a few seconds the light would come on and the game would go into hyper mode.

I remember saying "OMG that's fast"

hehe we also had an old machine in the family and i recall doing this a few times

, good memories

Angilion · 6 Sep 2006 at 00:10

Werewolf said:
I remember some of the 486's used to have it, and the fancier ones would also have an LED display prowdly showing it's current speed as 99 or 66

The memories

I remember the first time I got a CPU past 99MHz and thus "beat" the two-digit LED display on my case. I was so pleased

I still have that case in my bedroom. It's an over-sized full tower AT case called Goliath.

On some cases, you could set the front LED display by jumpers. Setting it to 99 in the days of 386s could be funny, especially if you could keep a straight face while boasting about it

Werewolf · 6 Sep 2006 at 00:45

samcat said:
Unless you could solder clock crystals

OLD school overclocking Those were the days.

Sam C

I'm fairly sure standard 486's went up to about 133 at the end of the range

i've got very vague memories of it being a jumper setting (4x 33 clock or something).

Papa Lazarou · 6 Sep 2006 at 01:42

IIRC, Intel's fastest was a 486 DX4-100 (33 mhz bus, 3 x multiplier).

AMD sold a 5x86-133 which was basically a 133mhz 486 with a few changes, aimed as a cheaper alternative to a Pentium 75

StarShock · 6 Sep 2006 at 07:52

hmm, there should be a way that you could use an old case's Turbo button for Cool&Quiet.... give a nice retro feel instead of one of those fancy new fangled fan controlers

Ex-RoNiN · 6 Sep 2006 at 08:12

Papa Lazarou said:
IIRC, Intel's fastest was a 486 DX4-100 (33 mhz bus, 3 x multiplier).

AMD sold a 5x86-133 which was basically a 133mhz 486 with a few changes, aimed as a cheaper alternative to a Pentium 75

Ah yes, those and their successors (686 they called them, no? The ones that had around 200MHz) were notoriously known for their poor floating point performance.

And today? Best raw processing power on the market :cool:

(well, until recently)

roid · 6 Sep 2006 at 08:19

Ah brings back fond school memories of trying to get the computer to crash by poking the turbo button as fast as humanly possible