I’ve been wondering this ever since I was five. What does that little button labelled ‘turbo’ on my computer do? I turn it off, and nothing happens. Back on, and once again, nothing noteworthy. What does this button do?
On older computers, it actually toggles the clock speed. For instance, on the 386SX / 33MHz I had, the Turbo button toggled the processor clock from 16MHz when turbo was off to the full 33 MHz when turbo was on.
As far as modern machines go, I have no idea as to whether or not it does anything.
Jman
I haven’t seen those in a long time. If I remember correctly, there used to be many games designed for a specific CPU speed (or speed range) and the games became too fast on a fast computer. So you switched the computer to a lower speed. It should have been called the “slow button” but of course a “turbo” button is more sexy.
Nowadays (actually, for the past 10 years) computer games use the extra CPU speed to make the graphics smoother, not faster.
Way back in the day some older DOS programs (we’re talking age of the dinosaurs stuff at this point) would get all confused if run at speeds faster than, say 8 or 16 mhz, and motherboards were designed with a “feature” to clutch the speed back for these older programs. The “turbo” button activated and de-activated this speed switching. ( ie turbo mode engaged was normal speed).
The button persisted on generic cases well past the point it was needed and people often used it for alternative things like sleep mode etc. depending in the MB feature set. How old is this beast anyway, I haven’t seen a turbo botton on a PC case in over 5+ years now.
Um, make the computer operate on turbines?
One of the Leisure Suit Larry games (number 3?) has a scene where you have to wait for an elevator to arrive. Apparently clock speed was used to determine the time you had to wait, but it used some bizzare inverse ratio, so the faster your computer the longer you had to wait. Back when this game came out (late 80’s or early 90’s, IIRC), you had to wait about a minute or so, but when I played the game on a Pentium III computer a couple years ago, I had to wait at least 15 minutes for the elevator to arrive.
My computer doesn’t have a “turbo” button. One of my games (gosh, it’s been forever since I’ve played games on it!) will not run on this computer because it’s an older program. I’ve heard there are programs that will temporarily slow the clock to allow older games to run. Does anyone know about these? Do they slow everything down, or just the specific game? That is, will the program be invoked only when the game is running and terminated when the game is closed?
Johnny L.A.: check out Moslo.
Years ago I was in charge of a server which for some reason seemed to be running awfully slowly. After some testing, I finally found out the the turbo button had been wired backwards, so it actually was running at the slower speed when the turbo light was on.
Part of the reason for having the turbo button was to slow down older programs, but the main reason it was there was to cut the clock speed purely for hardware reasons such as lower temperature, longer expected life, and greater reliability. These days we just run the cpu at its max and say to heck with reliability (everyone upgrades after a few years anyway). Industrial computers (used in manufacturing plants and such to control the plant) are often run at a slower clock speed so they can survive in uncooled areas and last longer.
Most programs that slow down a computer basically tap into the timer tick interrupt and just waste a bunch of time, so it slows the entire computer down while it is running. I’ve never taken a close look at moslo but I’m assuming it works this way.
Based on your previous knowledgeable posts I will treat your assertion seriously as to the other “hardware wear and tear” rationale for the Turbo button, but until you posted this I had *never heard this reason offered as a rationale for the turbo on/off mode, and I have been a PC geek for about 20 years now, although mainly in the corporate/home and not industrial environments. I can’t recall MB and CPU heat issues even being that big a deal until the 486 class CPUs starting getting into the 66 mhz region.
I think the biggest rationale was just marketing. Some genius somewhere figured it would sell better if they put a ‘turbo’ button on the computer. People equate turbocharging with power.