Okay, I got a game that runs way to fast on my computer, to the point where it isn’t even fun anymore. Is there any way I can slow my computer down at all to play this. I’ve tried the turbo button which dosen’t seem to make any difference. The system requirements are 386sx, 2MB ram, VGA, and win3.1 so you can imagine how it would run on a P2 with 64 (maybe 128 not sure)megs. If anyone was wondering it’s The Incredible Machine by Sierra. It’s a great game it just runs to damn fast to be fun.
Run a huge query with Microsoft Access in the background. That ought to do it.
I would think built for Win 3.1 it would not have been based on the Computer Clock, but maybe. I know some of the older games were based on the clock speed of the computer and if it was run on a much faster computer the game ran too fast. I am not sure if the turbo buttons do too much on the newer computers. Maybe you have just slowed down in your old age to the point that the game seems too fast.
There is a program you can get (freeware I think) called mo’slow. It allows you to make you computer run slower for just the purpose you are speaking of!
As a side note: this problem occurs because in the “old” days game makers didn’t figure they would have to worry about extra cpu cycles. They made games tied directly to the cpu clock (well, indirectly), where as most games today actually make a calculation of real time. Of course, I am speaking of games that have any kind of real time component and NOT turn based games.
I couldn’t find a direct link on any search engine (I didn’t look very hard), but you should be able to find it at probably tucows or download.com.
I remember getting a couple of neat monochrome games from a friend about 13 years ago, when even AT (286) computers were pricey. I loved playing them on his PC, an original IBM PC. But when I loaded them on my work computer, an AT, they sadly ran too @!#?@! fast to be fun.
I can barely imagine how they’d run on my Pentium III.
Also, just for future reference, the turbo button will have no effect on your computer.
The turbo button was included on a lot of cases and stopped functioning when we moved to the pentium.
All processors in the 286, 286 and 486 families had the problem of sometimes runing older software too fast, the turbo button forced these processors into acting like an 8088 or 8086, much older and slower. Pentiums do not have this ability.
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Are you sure it made them act like older chips? There may be some instances of that, but most motherboards operated by moving the changing the clock speed usually to 8 MHz and occasionally 4 MHz.
In order to make it act like an older chip it would potentially have to translate machine code instructions to the simpler set understood by the older cpu, and I don’t recall any instances of that. It would also have to be capable of ignoring some of the built in specs of the more advanced chip. For example, a 486 would then have to “know” to ignore it’s built in math co-processor when the turbo switch was off. I am not saying you are wrong, but I have never heard of anything like this, do you have any references for it?
By the time you get into the Pentium speed range, I suspect that trying to run at the older clock rates would fry the chip.
It is true that a great deal of early software was irresponsibly written to rely on the speed of the CPU. Turbo switches were invented for that reason – to reduce the clock rate of the motherboard.
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