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Aaaah our first PC. It had a Intel 80286, a display up front and a turbo button. I pressed it once. My parents became very mad. Because the fans of the PC spun

Aaaah our first PC. It had a Intel 80286, a display up front and a turbo button. I pressed it once. My parents became very mad. Because the fans of the PC spun up so much in turbo mode, they thought it would damage the computer. Just like how pressing ctrl+alt+delete did damage to the computer Sweet memories Still wish I hadn't taken that computer apart (and never put back together) in my never ending quest to quench my curiosity

elliotpage 8y ago
But think how much you learned in the process!
- NietTim 8y ago
  Hahaha, I never use reaction gifs but this too perfectly describes how I feel: https://media.tenor.com/images/0ba58bde3909480fd8f1749982df6896/tenor.gif https://media.tenor.com/images/0ba58bde3909480fd8f1749982df6... On the one hand, yea I guess I did learn some things from it, but on the other hand I went on to become a software developer not an electrical engineer, so how much did I really learn from it? Wouldn't it have been better off keeping it for the future... Some of my peers have some really cool old hardware that they used to do whatever on and I'm kind of envious of that :)
chaotic_clanger 8y ago
my friend (we were kids back then) refused to edit his config.sys and autoexec.bat because he didn't want to "unplug the processor" :)
danieldk 8y ago
Because the fans of the PC spun up so much in turbo mode, That's interesting, because 286s and 386s normally didn't even have heatsinks. Did they wire the turbo button to the fan of the PSU? IIRC, heatsinks were showing up on low-frequency 486s and heat sinks with fans on 486s >= 50MHz. I think (but may misremember) that most 486 fans were also always running at the same speed. (Not contesting your statement, just wondering what weird beast your first PC was ;).)
- Bluecobra 8y ago
  It could have been a white box PC. My stepfather’s business computers (in the mid 90s) were from some local mom and pop place that built custom PCs and also supported it if things went wrong. I think they tended to over-engineer things as all the PCs were full size (beige of course) AT towers with noisy fans.
- bitwize 8y ago
  Dating back to the 5150, most PCs had case fans. IIRC sometimes the fans would spin a little faster with Turbo engaged, even if just for effect.
- NietTim 8y ago
  They must have. The computer spend some months at a tech savy uncle when he first acquired some pre release version of windows 95 but it was also bought probably from a local store.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    Windows 95 did not run on a 286, the 286 was very limited in running real mode (8086/88) applications concurrently in protected mode (it did not have the virtual 8086 mode that the 386 had). The minimum requirement of Windows 95 was an 80386, though it was unbearably slow (tried to run it on an 386SX25 or 386DX40). It was usable on a 486 with 8GB of memory.

elliotpage 8y ago

But think how much you learned in the process!

NietTim 8y ago
Hahaha, I never use reaction gifs but this too perfectly describes how I feel: https://media.tenor.com/images/0ba58bde3909480fd8f1749982df6896/tenor.gif https://media.tenor.com/images/0ba58bde3909480fd8f1749982df6... On the one hand, yea I guess I did learn some things from it, but on the other hand I went on to become a software developer not an electrical engineer, so how much did I really learn from it? Wouldn't it have been better off keeping it for the future... Some of my peers have some really cool old hardware that they used to do whatever on and I'm kind of envious of that :)

chaotic_clanger 8y ago

my friend (we were kids back then) refused to edit his config.sys and autoexec.bat because he didn't want to "unplug the processor" :)

danieldk 8y ago

Because the fans of the PC spun up so much in turbo mode, That's interesting, because 286s and 386s normally didn't even have heatsinks. Did they wire the turbo button to the fan of the PSU? IIRC, heatsinks were showing up on low-frequency 486s and heat sinks with fans on 486s >= 50MHz. I think (but may misremember) that most 486 fans were also always running at the same speed. (Not contesting your statement, just wondering what weird beast your first PC was ;).)

Bluecobra 8y ago
It could have been a white box PC. My stepfather’s business computers (in the mid 90s) were from some local mom and pop place that built custom PCs and also supported it if things went wrong. I think they tended to over-engineer things as all the PCs were full size (beige of course) AT towers with noisy fans.
bitwize 8y ago
Dating back to the 5150, most PCs had case fans. IIRC sometimes the fans would spin a little faster with Turbo engaged, even if just for effect.
NietTim 8y ago
They must have. The computer spend some months at a tech savy uncle when he first acquired some pre release version of windows 95 but it was also bought probably from a local store.
- danieldk 8y ago
  Windows 95 did not run on a 286, the 286 was very limited in running real mode (8086/88) applications concurrently in protected mode (it did not have the virtual 8086 mode that the 386 had). The minimum requirement of Windows 95 was an 80386, though it was unbearably slow (tried to run it on an 386SX25 or 386DX40). It was usable on a 486 with 8GB of memory.