I had a PC with a turbo button and when I took it apart I realized the button was directly wired to the LED light. It literally did nothing but turn on a light.

We all pushed it, all of us. We didn't care what it did, it was just unheard of NOT to push the TURBO button!

The guy who invented the Turbo button's ancestor must have been the dude who named Greenland

the key and power switch thing is something that needs to come back it looks much more fun to use than just a button

We had a turbo button on our first PC: 286, 1mb ram, 40mb hdd and 2 floppies. Turbo changed processor speed between 15 and 7 MHz i think

I remember tinkering as a very small kid with an already old pc, it had the turbo button which increased the 10mhz processor to a whopping 20mhz

As a game developer, this is one of the most important things to remember when programming. While some game engines nowadays do it for you, the engine I use requires me to multiply anything to do with time by a variable called 'delta' which is the time since the last frame, and if you don't do this it might look right for you, but it'll be completely broken on computers that run much faster or slower than yours. For example, in one of my games before I knew the importance of this magical 'delta' variable I would just decrease a timer variable by exactly 0.016 every frame, and on my computer (which ran at 60 FPS) it worked just fine and decrease by about 0.96 each second, by at 30 FPS it would decrease by 0.48 every second, causing it to slow down.

I remember the turbo button. I pressed it once and the computer didn't start anymore

When he said "you know what else's fine" , I expected him to follow with "a word from our sponsor"

I'd like to point out that the turbo button acting in reverse is because PC makers often plugged the connection of the Turbo button inverted (Likely due to a mistake and/or oversight). VWestlife made a video about it recently

My first computer was a 486 w/ turbo button. I got a promo disk for a U.S. Robotics Modem (28.8k I believe). It had a game you could play and a high score would generate a code you could submit for prizes. I remember using the turbo button to slow the game way down and give yourself more time to react. Got a free T-shirt out of it.

I had that same case with the "66" display. (Nearly everyone did, back then.) The numbers were settable via DIP switches, and when I upgraded to a 486DX2/100, I set it to "99".

I actually recommend the video "The PC turbo button mystery finally solved!" by VWestlife. The point that I'd like to make is: the button is actually meant to speed the computer the up. But the button and the indicating light can be wired in reverse. Some manufacturer didn't wire it correctly, and that may be the cause of the confusion. It's there to ultimately toggle between the 2 speeds of the computer.

I’m loving Riley as a host. His delivery with the excellent editing makes these videos some of my favorite on UKposts.

I still have an IBM key from an old tower on my keychain that has been on there for about 20 years now hahaha

An old Intel manual says that having Turbo enabled boosts the CPU frequency 🐸

I would love a physical button to switch between a stock and an overclocked setting.

According to a research of the tech youtuber VWestlife, pushing the turbo In fact raised the CPU clock speed to the maximum

Well I had a PC that would not post with the Turbo (fast speed) turned on, until it warmed up. Once warm enough then it could post at the faster speed.

Am I too old if my first PC was 8086 and I remember turbo buttons and math coprocessors.

Oh boy, this takes me back to the 386/486 days. Kids won't know the joys of the old days.

Thank you for educating the youth about how we got to where we are today. Especially the part where a button is faster and easier to use than a nested menu.

I've also had Turbo button on an old keyboard but instead it had a different function of controlling the key repeating speed.

0:55 Intel 8088. I wish they'd gone with 8086 in the original PC but they didn't. I had an AST 386/33 PC in the late 80s a button that switched it between 3 speeds. By default it ran 33 MHz but it could switch down to speeds simulating the speeds of the IBM AT and IBM PC so that old DOS games could run at the right speed. On most machines I had, the "turbo" button slowed the machine down to the slower speed since they booted into the fastest speed automatically, or could be set to, and why wouldn't you? Older ones had a turbo mode that had to be activated with software. Texas Instruments 286 machines booted into 6 MHz and you had to activate turbo 8 MHz by software! It seemed the "turbo" thing was disappearing by the mid 90s and those LED displays of the clock speed that were common for a few years went away. This was a neat little trip down memory lane.

The turbo button didn't change the speed if the cpu, but the fsb. This mattered when you had a DX2 cpu.. The thing was that both 8086 and 8088 had the same fsb speed. But on a lot of old PC there was no real time clock. So in steed of measuring time, the game measured the FSB speed and slowing it down It was typically very primitive simply rendering one frame, then waiting set amount of time. This work good on really simple game. That is why Sierra game have speed setting, where "highest" is a wait time of 0. And that is also why the speed controller is so diffrent between diffent computers.

Omg I had totally forgotten about the turbo buttons on PCs man that brings me back.

On most of the machines I used, the turbo button made the computer run faster when it was pushed in. Fortunately, they mostly had displays to show the state. Of course, the others were confusing. The rule was, always have it running faster unless a program was running too fast, then slow it down.

It depends on how the button was wired. Sometimes, the button was wire in the invers, so when the button was pressed in, turbo would turn off not on.

Fun fact:Before the turbo button you had to push a key combination (like Ctrl +F12) to enable the turbo mode. So it would always reset on a reboot/shutdown.

The Turbo button actually had an even more important function in clones of the early IBM PC. Thing is the floppy controller was relying on the CPU speed to get the timing of the read and write operations correct. So trying to write to a diskett with the computer running at a higher speed could corrupt the filesystem on the floppy. So you were supposed to only enable the higher clock speed when the programs were started and then slow it down again before saving any document or crate a file on a floppy. And remember that at this time very few actually had a HDD in their computer so floppys was what most people booted from, ran programs from, and saved their work on. So instead of just being nice to have it was actually critical for the computers to work at first. This weakness was soon fixed with better floppy controllers that took care of the timing issues no matte how fast or slow the CPU was. As for games starting to use the RTC (Real Time Clock) for timing and controlling the speed that was far from always the case. Years later, after sound cards got really common, many games were written to use timers on the sound cards for this. That was because they had much higher precision than the RTC and allowed for better control. This was common even after HPET, or High Precision Event Timer was introduced for just this reason, but to the best of my knowledge no modern games do this. I stumbled onto this a few years back when I tried to run an old game. Everything worked fine except for some arcade sequences that was totally impossible because they speed past so quickly. After some back and forth I found out it was because of my USB sound adapter. It didn't provide the timer that the game used to pace the action. As soon as I switched to use the sound device integrated on the motherboard everything was fine as that did support the timers that the game used. If you wonder the game in question was "Ur-Quan Masters".

Back in the day when I was using a 5x86 133mhz, the clock speed was set with jumpers. I connected the turbo button up to the jumper that would overclock it to 160mhz. I configured the number display to say both speeds. So I was one of the only people to have a turbo button that really went turbo. The most fun part is that the OC would work even when the machine was already running. So I'd launch doom or some other game and hit the turbo button to OC, then when I was done I'd hit the button again to go back to 133.

that segway from managing servers to the linode sponsor was smoother than every single segway that linus made

I LOVE RILEY SO MUCH XD So smooth and makes videos way more enjoyable XD

technology has took a huge leap from that turbo button to now i kind of miss that turbo button ♥ great vid btw ♠

I remember have it pushed in always.. didn’t know what it did but it said turbo That was on my first pc tho.. the next one had high/low signals and I would always keep it on high

I remember i rewired my turbo button in my old case when i upgraded to a Pentium 100mhz. With the button activated, it ran on 150mhz. It was my very first overclocking. 😀

Talk about a blast from the past. I remember almost 30 years later that particular shell.

3:23 I like that the Win10 and especially the Win8 screenshots are way older than the Win7 one

You need to do a video explaining upscaling methods, and looking at how particular common pieces of hardware and software achieve it (nearest neighbour, bilinear, bicubic etc,)

So that's why trying to play OneMustFall in DOSBox on my first contemporary PC had me getting Perfected in under 1s

Before the inclusion of led 7 segment displays for the speed (mostly a marketting thing) there was just a simple orange led for turbo state. Lit was high speed. Button pushed for low speed was a feature of some motherboards as it allowed the system to start in high speed without the button even being connected. If your case didn't have a turbo button you'd want a high speed by default motherboard. Many systems were pushed for high speed, so to know the state look at the led. Once Pentiums came around Turbo became completely uselss as it just couldn't slow the cpu down enough to match a 4.77 mhz 8088. Thecpu cache made pentiums way too fast. Even on a 486 it was pretty useless. 386s were old and slow enough that it still made sense at the time they were released. Old games had bad timing because the Original PC didn't have any support for vsync so games couldn't time themselves on display refresh. VGA did support vsync so vga games are usually much better behaved. Windows games must use a hardware timer because they cannot rely on vsync being on as its usually a gpu driver setting.

My friend played on Nintendo Switch with a controller for Mario Kart (idk) and it had a turbo button. We joked about the button blowing up the console. This video reminded me of it, had a chuckle.

On some mother boards from 2000 to 2004 i was able to rig and configure the turbo button to actully over clock the AMD processors i had some desktops i built hoolong them up to the over clock jumpers it worked. there was 3 congigurationd on the jumpers for base clock speed and over clock speed from 2.4Ghz to 2.33ghz ran good. and 2.80Ghz wich it got to hot and froze up. the button made it do much easyer then having to keep opening the case and pulling tinny jumprs thst fall in the cracks switching them. :)

Reminds me of the older CNC machines at my work. They all have knobs that control “power” of the machine. 0 stops the motors and 100 is full speed…but the old machines go to 150.

My first PC didn't even have a turbo button, it was the PC that made future PCs need a turbo button. 🤣

To be clear, Turbo mode as detailed in the original specifications, does always make the CPU run faster (really just it's normal intended speed). What varied from system to system was the configuration of the button, whether pushing it in turned on turbo mode, or off. VWestlife has a great video about this exact subject, the pins for turbo buttons were configurable for both ways.

Someone got hacked

Very interesting fact! I didn't know it till this video but i remember it from childhood. I saw them 20+ years ago on some old consoles (and may be on old computers sorry for my poor memory).

The O.S. looks at the onboard clock for time in case it can't get it from the server, but it syncs with a time server in Windows if I'm not mistaken.

i wish i knew that when i had couple of these machines nearly 30 years ago 😂 i used to switch the jumpers on the tiny display module so it shows the highest number possible when clicked 🤣

Riley said I'm fine. Really made my day 🤣

I needed it on for rebel assault 2, man those were the days

I remember as a teenager downloading trial software, and winding back my desktop date to keep the trials forever. this only worked for a couple years haha

4:14 "those old 286 pc's" look like a perfect match to my old 486DX2

Thanks for such historical lesson. As a person born 2002 I have never heard of this button :D

Thx, 3decades latter I finally understand wht it's use was for.

It's not just a Turbo button not found on most common casings, it's also the classic Reset button to restart your OS by force.

I love the joke about the unicorn vomit at the end....lol

I can’t believe I’m just now learning this. We used Mo’Slo back in the day for the same thing.

Someone should make a motherboard that has a few custom programmable IOs for things like on-case buttons that do whatever the user programs them to do. Then someone could make a custom case mod Turbo button or key lock.

It’s like in the Max Steel, you go turbo whenever the situation call’s for it.

I had “Learn to Spell” from Spinnaker software. One side of the floppy was for Apple ii and the other was PC compatibles. I had to hit the turbo button on my PC to slow down the CPU or the little dolphin might swim too fast and fly out the side of the Gorilla brand amber CRT

damn i didnt expect to catch a stray like that as an eagles fan on techquickie.... lmao

Love the superbowl reference 😂

Shoutout to the animator that put talking Riley in the pong ball, it didn't go unnoticed.

Why must you make me feel old!?

My ASUS G30AB Desktop came with this button instead of usual 'Reset' button. There's default OC profiles in UEFI Bios, so while being in Windows, you can press it and it will go from 3.7Ghz to 3.8Ghz and 4.1Ghz. Instant over-clocking. I never needed to boost even in CS:GO and still gave great headshots.

Love the Riley in the pong game!

Lazy Game Review (LGR) released a video about the same thing around 7 years ago. This video about the turbo button from Techquickie reminds me of the video about the same thing by LGR 🙂.

Turbo always speeds the computer up, some pcs just had the turbo button wired up as normally closed so its in turbo while unpressed and takes it out of turbo by pressing

Kinda wierd seeing ltt being completely compromised

You have primed me well When Riley said You know what else is fine? This message from our sponsor Was my immediate association

I kinda experienced this on my win 8.1 machine, still wondering why the hell it happened. So i took the cpu cooler out, applied some thermal paste without wiping the old one and put it back together. It was on 2x speed, every windows animation! It went away after a restart and my puny brain at time thought the cause was the mixed paste so i wiped it and applied new.

I always thought its just an Overclock, and I guess it is? o0 The programs timing thing brings painful memories... some games just didn't work well.

Back in my days, with XT/286/386/486 in short words, it is like "overclocking" for these days, and it really worked, I had a XT computer, then 286, then 386, then 486, even computers with AMD CPU INTEL compatible, and with CYRIX CPU.

0:32 He is like Napoleon Dynamite of computers. Sweet.

This was a thing in to the 2000's but even in the 90's they worked on some pc's. off my old amd k7 ran at 800mhz and with it on it ran at 1ghz but it also ramped up the fans to 100 percent all the time.

Fallout 1 without patch has this issue. World travel map was very slow originally when installed on modern CPU suddenly you move to fast to click on places.

Can you all please do a video on Windows "Memory Integrity" and "Local Security Authority" features under the Device Security tab? Windows keeps buggin me about it and I don't know if I should enable it or not. A big performance loss would be unfortunate

Yep, i remember using this to play a few games.

1:34 Nice.

Gee, thanks.. Im having flashbacks to setting the jumpers on Turbo LED displays now....

Does anyone know who's build that was at the start of the video, the one with the black and gold

If only Linus used today's sponsor, Nord VPN.

Why did you troll me personally there at the end? "Fine" self?

I got really excited for this video and had my reality destroyed when my experience clashed with what was explained. So, like, were there any PCs issued where the Turbo button _actually_ clocked things faster? When I was around 10 or 11 I had a couple old computers, one of which was a tad newer looking than the other (IBM PC) which included a sweet green-shift button on the monitor and a square TURBO push-button on the case that illuminated green when on. I was curious about it and would cycle it when running programs like Duke Nukem doing DOS commands like dir /L and it would ALWAYS be _notably faster_ when turbo was on. When I'd toggle it off, things would be unusably slow. Did I misinterpret the lesson in the vid, or did somebody at some point actually make a turbo button that made the computer zoom? Hahaha

04:16 Finally a sound take on RGB from LMG

Thank Riley!

Overclockers : Shifting to Maximum Overdrive Non-Overclockers : I should've have a Turbo.

Some of those 7-segment displays on clone computers needed to be set manually via a plethora of jumpers (shunts) on the back of the PCB. It wasn't difficult for some, but it could be a bit tedious.

I never pushed it! I used to think it would release NOS infused exhaust gas out of my PC's one exhaust fan in the back frying the cables! Partial effect of watching Fast and Furious movies in the early 2000s! 😂

Question: Would it have been unreasonable for programs back then to use the system time?

Wow, it's been a million years but I finally found out why the computer I worked on in high school had a turbo button. I just kept it pressed in all the time otherwise the computer was ridiculously slow.

Waitttt computers had keys back then???? I want that!!

My gaming laptop's overclocking button is called "TURBO". Of course, all it does it make the laptop sound like a jet engine, for exchange for slightly cooler temperatures and a few extra frames per second.

Turbo button should come back! As well some status Leds on laptops. Like Lenovo T400 - it had 10 status led.

Anyone else have "boot disc" in those days? It was a floppy that you'd insert when you want to play games that were too good for the PC... often created by some computer genius friend and the PC read it on startup and it somehow made those games able to actually load and play properly. Probably reduced the amount of components the PC loads during startup... Seemed like magic.

if I remember correct my first computer (95) had this including a display, pressing the button changed the number from i think 44 to 66 ... never understood why though XD I guess I didn't have enough old enough games .... I think I did have some games where I had trouble with speed but I never knew that it might be solved with the Turbo button.

I think they should use the same logic for power buttons. When in the On state, your PC enters a power saving mode consuming now power.

I actually am going to put a turbo label on my mux switch now