3 ms·
The way I remember the turbo button it just halved the clock speed when not depressed, but it didn't bring it back to the original IBM PC's speed. I do remembe
by fipar 1mo ago
The way I remember the turbo button it just halved the clock speed when not depressed, but it didn't bring it back to the original IBM PC's speed.
I do remember using it to make older games play less bad, but, as you say, this rarely worked, I think precisely because the speed was never the original one (I don't remember the clock speed of my first PC, but the first one with a turbo button ran at 33 MHz which I'm sure is a lot more than twice the speed of the first one; seems closer to 8x from what a quick search implies).
- MBCook 1mo agoIt was more than half (depending on age). I thought it always took you to 4.77 MHz to match the original 5150.
- fipar 1mo agoI didn't know, thanks, you've sent me down a small rabbit hole reading up on this!
- MBCook 1mo agoSure. I never understood it as a kid. The fact it slowed your computer always confused me since I didn’t realize it was on by default. I didn’t learn the real purpose until long after they were gone.
- Anamon 1mo agoYes, our first family PC was a 386 that we could slow down from 33 to 16 MHz with the Turbo button. It even had the segment display to show the current clock rate. I knew what it was for and had some old games that ran too fast, but from what I remember, in most cases 16 MHz was still much too fast, so I didn't use the button much. I think it was no problem to switch Turbo mode on and off in the middle of running software.