The PC turbo button mystery finally solved! 

*Note:* This video was originally uploaded in October 2022 as an unlisted, updated version of the initial release of this video, which used a portion of text-to-speech synthesis which some viewers didn't like. I decided to make this version public, which is why it shows up as being published in February 2023, and retire the initial version of the video.

you have an extremely good narrator voice and you have clearly worked hard to remove all verbal pauses . i like your voice a lot, please don't make me listen to TTS again

Yup. I was always confused when RU-vidrs said that the turbo button, when pushed in, would slow down your machine. I've tried explaining that I would play Wolfenstein on the college pc and the turbo (when on) would run the game much smoother. I was always told to go do my research as it was a known fact that the turbo button slowed your machine down. Even though, like I said, I'd actually lived it XD

I somehow managed to be ass-deep in computers through the entire "turbo button" era and never once knew about that keyboard shortcut. I have no idea how I missed that.

Only 10 seconds longer for the authentic VWestlife narration. I've got an extra 10 seconds for you any day :)

I honestly never knew the turbo button was even a mystery. Thought this was basic knowledge for anyone who grew up in the 90s

This version is certainly better than the original upload. Using the TTS may have been a time constraint, but honestly, your voice works much better for narration.

My dad used to turn the turbo mode on when he was doing work in Lotus123.. I told him it didn't do anything for that, but he was sure it made him work faster - not the software, him, hisself. I'm glad PCs grew out of that phase - the last 3 PCs I've built for him and my mom over the years since the early days were excellent for their needs, and the only complaints they ever had was that they had to get used to the desktop resolution making things look 'too good', and 'not blocky enough', and occasionally they would accidentally 'delete a program' by which they meant they deleted the desktop shortcut. :p

I had my first turbo mode PC in and around 1996. All I ever did was run benchmark tests because I had no other use for a PC. Life was so simple back then.

I was around when the turbo button was used in anger :-) Some early software couldn't run past 8mhz without problems and the turbo button allowed the computer to be slowed down to accommodate that software. Turbo was a marketing term to explain backwards compatibility.

I've never been so happy to hear your voice since subbing to this channel, the TTS voice was nice, but it reminded me of those old pc commercials from the 90's, thank you for uploading another version with your own voiceover, it's much appreciated!

Love your voice as a narrator, you have a unique sound and accent that lends itself really well to it.

Also in the 80s anything with turbo on it instantly made it better in the minds of people in the 80s, you could get some Turbo sunglasses or a Turbo vacuum :) Great video btw, liked your voice in the video also.

i prefer your voice to the tts but honestly great job for listening to everyone and remaking the video even when you didnt have to just for your fans. this is my first time watching but it seems like you really care about you community and im excited to become a part of it

Had a 486 clone, about 30 years ago. And my turbo button was active when pushed in. And I compared it by turnin' it on and off while runnin' a screensaver. The difference was usually readily apparent.

Turbo mode button reminds me of the amplifier dial that goes to 11 in the Spinal Tap movie, where the narrator says why don’t you just make the 10 louder and use a 10 selector dial.

I didn't hate the text to speech voice (especially since it was only one part of the video), but your actual voice is certainly better!

"Proves" can be used in sentences such as "it proves fun", meaning "it turned out to be fun" or "it reveals itself to be fun", so I think what they were saying was "When you do this, it reveals itself to be (an unsurpassed) 60% faster machine than others". So rather than being a mistake, it's probably just a bit of outdated grammar.

This is definitely a lot better, dude :) .

I like how he explains what he is doing because I cannot see but I could imagine what he’s doing. I was born in 1984, so I really don’t know much of those old computers but I do know a lot about Windows 95 and up.

Thank goodness you FINALLY solved the mystery. I don't know I was thinking when I read about this in my computer manual or my PC Magazine subscription in the 80s. Thank you again for your hard work bringing this back our attention.

why is this video coming back after 4 months?

Yay! Thank you for uploading this video with your narration, always love to have your videos in the background and the TTS was a bit off.

Haven't thought about that 3 wire turbo button connector for years! Great memories, great channel 👍

You bring out a lot of old memories from back then. Thanks for this video great explanation of the turbo function and some older pc's in general. 👍

Tech RU-vidrs saying "turbo slows it down" is like my mother saying the popcorn button on the microwave is for show

thank you very much for oponing my eyes to this ancient mystery! (excellent video.)

In the mid 90s, at my office we had PCs that, instead of a light for the Turbo button, had a small display that showed "HI" and "LO" for speed. A couple of people at my office argued back and forth about which one was faster, "H1" or "L0" and were astounded when I told them that it was shorthand for "High" and "Low."

Thank you for uploading this with your own voice. I couldn't stand that other one.

What a walk down memory lane - thanks so much for publishing this.

My first family PC was running Windows 95 and had the lock key and the turbo button. I remember the Turbo button would make the machine noticibly louder, so I had always assumed it just sped up the fans to cool the CPU better. This was back in the day with those giant hard disk ribbon cables and case ventilation was basically a meme. 😂😂

I swore I saw this video once already but then I realized you went back and read the narration in the first portion. Hey this was a good video so it was worth another watch

Excellent video. Very well put-together and succinctly narrated.

Anyone else love the transition sound? Because it's perfect

To make things MORE confusing, on cases with the "speed" display, often times there was NOT a Turbo LED. SO, IF you reversed the 3-wire connector but had the button pressed in, it would show the Turbo Speed, but would actually be running at the slower, non-turbo speed. I had to correct quite a few customer builds because they had the connector backwards!

I don't know why I watched this as it just confirms what I probably knew 30 years ago but had forgotten and there is now no need to know this information. It is a good video and entertaining for some strange reason, maybe because it confirms I once knew what I doing. Keep up the good work!

Brillant reupload Kevin. Last one was fine but always better when your voice is heard :). Informative, funny , unpretentious and direct. Perfect combo. 👌

I worked for an HP dealer when the 80486 machines came out. The ad campaign featured HP Vectra computers with stickers all over them like Grand National race cars.

Thankyou, so much! This is so very much appreciated.

Thanks for the various benchmarks! Back when 486s were actually still in use I was led to believe that the button only changed the CPU speeds on 8086/8088 machines or possibly 286s. On later machines it just did things like deactivating the cache or coprocessor, or so I was told. Learned something new today!

Great job man! Thank you, sincerely. I'm embrarrassed my intense autodidactic curiosty failed to motivate me to answer this question on my own in 1989. Feels great to get closure to something I forgot I always wanted to know.

Well worth the re-up. Your narration matches these machines very nicely.

Always a good day to hear the 8088 processor mentioned. Brings back a lot of memories from Community College computer lab in the mid 80s. Thanks for the videos.

I love this channel!

What a flash back. Love it. Thanks

7:33 Thank you so much for clearing this up! I had a Compaq 386 25Mhz in 1992 which included the LED indicator, but it always puzzled me that when pushing the button the PC actually slowed down. Sometimes it just takes 30+ years to solve a mistery!

I had that exact model Gateway. It was a really solid computer at the time. It defaulted to turbo and I basically never turned it off.

I'm glad you made this version available to us. Until I watched the TTS version I didn't realize that your voice is a big part of what gets me engaged with these videos :)

Absolutely good video 🔥

"It doesn't speed up your PC if you press it, it slows it down if you _don't_ press it" is a very good way of putting it! It should never have been called turbo in the first place, it should have been called "Slow mode" or something and worked accordingly.

My first computer, a Magitronic XT clone, had a blue turbo button on the front. Made playing Digger and Ribit (in your video!) much easier 😁 Excellent video! 👏

I have this old keyboard that needs two adapters to use with my new PC, and it has a Turbo button in the middle of the arrows. The eight arrows. Yeah, it has diagonals. I love that thing.

Regardless of how the button is configured I always considered the turbo button as a means to slow down the computer because with turbo enabled the CPU is simply running at its designed speed. Disabling the button was to slow down the computer to resolve issues. If the turbo button were designed to overclock the CPU or to enable another piece of hardware like a coprocessor or something then I would have considered it to be an actual turbo button to speed up the computer. I feel like the turbo button is more akin to a button in your car that would turn a governor on and off for the engine rather than a button that would toggle the boost from a turbo on and off. I just think the button was poorly named.

Not sure if "I wasn't born when this was a thing" equals "mystery", but I respect the clickbait hustle.

Watching your videos about all these PCs from the 80s and 90s brought back happy memories. ☺️

This video is the best. great job

I am amazed that your old PC collection (I actually used some of those way back then :)) is in very good and working condition, but you still have the printed manual for the motherboard! I would be glad to have such collection!

This is a much needed video. You must watch it. ☺♥

Great history lesson! Glad to know just exactly what this button did.

Oh nice a updated video! Anyways I always likes videos about old computers

I appreciate this so much I watched the video again

Our first computer was a 386 that had a turbo that bumped it up from 20 to 25 Mhz. We typically pressed it the same time we pressed the power button to boot the computer up and never really thought about what it did. Thanks for the video.

Yeah, someone pointed the narration voice. That’s part of the appeal of this channel. Kudos as always🎉

PC builder since 1977: Hard-drives weren't as peppy or reliable as one may want. Some drives worked best within a narrow range of temperature, or only in certain orientations. A 'warm-up interval' with several attempts to Boot was just a thing we all expected to do in the morning. Maybe it was the surplus drives we were using? Turbo allowed better 'fit' between MOBO speeds, drives and driver controller(s). Booting was a fine art for many years, and sometimes slowing down was the only way to maintain stability.

Thanks for the link - the video with your real voice is much more pleasurable!

My only issue with the TURBO buttons was that they were dangerously close to the RESET button on many cases... Means that when one thought he can just get down to the tower case hidden under the table and push it by memory... ooops... there it was 🙂

I remember watching that creed clip on tv when it originally aired. That's how I know i'm getting old.

Yeah, our first PC was noticeably faster with the turbo mode on. It was never in question in our household. Great upload, thanks! Looking forward to more.

Thanks. I thought I remembered it working the way you show it does.

The only channel that covers most of my hobbies. Computing, audio video, electronics. I hope u do on motorcycle review soon.

I am so glad i subscribed to your channel! I've seen this numerous times especially on wikipedia that information was either plain wrong or faulty. While knowing very well in the back of my head that i've read something different years ago in a magazine or manual. Of course some magazines were also wrong or published rumours and hearsay but seeing multiple manuals and then something very different on wikipedia is just questionable. Also made me think about the "toaster incident" on wikipedia.

Nice ! thank you !

I love how you added a retro 80s style to this video, to emphasize the point... very artistic.

Questions from my childhood were answered finally.

I had my Turbodisplay hooked on my HDD indicator. Set the jumpers to read Hd on the display and -- for idle. Nice fancy effect.

Back in the mid 90s I used the Zenith Z-148 PC for practicing my typing with typing tutor IV program. The one I used at the time had the internal hard drive instead of the additional 5.25 floppy drive.

Wow those sounds brought back some memories, lol. Never knew about the keyboard combination to toggle the turbo mode.

I remember the first computer I saw with a turbo button. Back then most computers booted to DOS and a menu came up first. From there you selected a program or windows if that was installed. Most machines struggled to boot WORD in less that 20 seconds. The first time we booted WORD with the turbo button in the thing loaded in 3-4 seconds. I thought how do they make them so fast. It’s funny to think of that now.

I can confirm this. Great video, can’t believe I remember.

I think you just relieved a headache I suppressed 30 years ago! 😂😂😂

One thing to add: When the case had those 7-segment displays, what was shown on those was configured by… A pin header and bunch of jumpers on the backside of that display. So with a manual for the case, or just with a bit of experimentation, your 33-MHz 386SX could show 99, PC, FU, or whatever else you could think of with that 14 segments. (Well, maybe some cases had it hard-wired, but this was the situation with our first PC at home.)

I'm so glad you made this video, and with actual contemporary references to what the turbo button is actually supposed to do. I've had this discussion with several people in my club and they always take out their phone and point to some "doggone" Gizmodo like article saying turbo button "aaaccckkktttuuullly" slows it down. The funny thing is the people that are telling me this are so much younger than me and have likely never even owned or used a computer that had one. Well I have owned and used turbo mode computers and all of the ones I had (I had 4 computers that had them) the turbo mode switch was correctly wired to speed up the computer when activated by a button press using ones middle finger. Its likely more commonly pressed with an index finger. But I would routinely use my middle finger to press the turbo mode activating button as my middle finger is the longest of my fingers and the position of the button on most of the computers I had was such that using my longest finger, the middle one, was the most sensible finger to use.

This REALLY needed to be done, so many crossed wires on the subject!

You even had a clip of MuchMusic Video on Trial here. Certainly a blast from the past. That was a good show.

Those startup sounds are so nostalgic.

you have a good voice for videos!! don't waste it on TTS!!

My 486 turbo button only had 2 pins, and the motherboard defaulted to "fast" mode. Without the button connected at all, the computer would run at full speed no matter what. With the turbo button connected and pressed in, it would slow down, and this would happen regardless of the orientation of the connector on the header. Maybe it varies computer by computer, but that's how mine is set up, and there is literally no way to configure the turbo button to make the computer faster, the ONLY option for my machine is for the turbo button to slow down the computer

I appreciate that the wikipedia article for the turbo button is correct now, and it links to that Intel datasheet for citation.

Just came across your channel & can admit your narration brings something to the video no TTS can ever bring to the table. Great video nonetheless :)

"IT'S CALLED A BOOK" Well said!

"Now let's look at something the people who write Wikipedia articles and tech blogs have apparently never heard of. It's called a book." Bro throwing shade 😂😂

Yes. Because a lot of software used the CPU itself to limit their processing speed, running at full tilt at the max speed of the processor with no software speed management for whatever processing the program did. hitting the turbo button didn't speed up your computer, it slowed it down. I remember playing with the turbo button on my PC clone and the game Robotron. In slow mode, the game ran properly. At high speed, you'd start the game and the robots would just blink to the middle of the screen and you were dead.

This whole video plays like a late 80s instructional VHS tape 😂 love it!

"the book" I love that sentence:D Thanks for that great info. Once upon a time, being a kid, I also had PC with turbo, but I was always jealous of my friend who also had such BUT including the speed indicator:)

Hi, another great video This is like the black magic of computers, being old enough to have purchased C64 new and every other computer almost every second year, then a life time of PC upgrades I explain to people at the time many games or software was speed sensitive, with 286/386/496 you have the option to slow back to stock XT 4.77m Nortons info is good, but so it making them play frogger !! I explain wired correctly your fast machine is full time turbo or fast on , only when you want it to slow down it is turbo off or slow The first machine that did not have the turbo connector on the mother board was a Pentium 100 Regards George

Google: older computers had problems with software running too fast on more powerful computers. Disengaging the turbo function fixed this. You: **TWENTY MINUTE VIDEO**

Thank you !

Lol my grandma used to tell me never to press the turbo button or it would burn up the computer. I just facepalmed and said "that's not how it works.... It's for older apps" Depends on how the button is configured but usually it did slow the machine down when pressed in.

@9:14 - I've had 3 beers. All I heard was "pin head" and laughed out loud.

I remember how I was fiddling with the numeric indicator to show "HI" and "LO" instead of "66/33" on my 486DX-2/66. Only I was a couple of jumpers short so I had to make it display "Hi" and "--" in the end, and was very proud of myself when it worked out. Ah, good old times!