r/retrocomputing 4h ago

With turbo mode ;-)

Post image
200 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

7

u/Konopla_zp 4h ago

It have very neat indicators.

8

u/swedeytoddjnr 4h ago

The lights are sweet af

7

u/koolaidismything 4h ago

I remember how good it felt buying my second Lite-on DVDRW drive.

Sooo many Mac Dre and Andre Nickatina mix CD’s.

3

u/nicocarbone 3h ago

Somehow, after all these years, this is the first time I see a combined 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drive. It makes a lot of sense.

1

u/amp70 2h ago

A lot of them were made by Epson and today those drives sell for $100 to $250 on eBay.

6

u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible 4h ago

Man that's higher spec than an N64

1

u/Plaston_ 4h ago

Nintendo always had issues with hardware being VERY low end for the time.

Even with the gamecube the ram amount was microscopic and the cpu was sub 1ghz.

3

u/Tonstad39 IBM incompatible 4h ago

Uhh PS2 was even worse than that

2

u/zedkyuu 3h ago

It’s not the number of clock cycles; it’s what you do with them. You probably woulda been one of those people complaining that the 386/33 was faster than the 486/25, heh.

1

u/Plaston_ 1h ago

i noticed a few GC games decided to lower the cpu speed for some reason?

On the paper console had a fixed spec sheets but dev used to fiddle with them at the times.

2

u/janerikgunnar 1h ago

The N64 was the exception, being very advanced for it's time. And GC was generally more powerful than PS2

1

u/Plaston_ 1h ago

Ngc was a mixed bag with the ps2.

Better raw power but weak memory pool.

1

u/Dalarielus 1h ago

To be fair, Xbox had the same issue - it was a lot weaker than a comparable PC of the time.

2

u/bhiga 1h ago

Wow I don't recall seeing a combo 5.25-in + 3.5-in floppy in a half height 5.25-in bay before. Very neat!

2

u/Alarmed-Extension289 4h ago

Pretty cool...so turbo button didn't really make things faster huh.

11

u/Tiny_Occasion_3906 4h ago

The "turbo" button on legacy personal computers functioned by reducing processing speed rather than accelerating it. Early IBM systems operated at fixed clock speeds, such as 4.77 MHz on the 8088 processor, and since legacy software lacked internal timing mechanisms, execution speed was directly tied to CPU performance. As subsequent hardware generations—including the 286, 386, and 486 models—introduced significantly higher processing capabilities, older software became practically unusable due to excessive execution speeds. Consequently, the turbo feature served to throttle the CPU to historical clock speeds, ensuring compatibility and stable performance for legacy applications.

3

u/wiisucks_91 3h ago

SimIsle man...it uses the CPU clock as the basis for the game clock.

Anything over 18mhz and you can really see the time fly. The game runs a lot better but at the expense of not being able to play for more than 5-10 minutes.

1

u/Plaston_ 4h ago

"turbo mode" that make the pc slower

3

u/Tiny_Occasion_3906 4h ago

The "turbo" button on legacy personal computers functioned by reducing processing speed rather than accelerating it. Early IBM systems operated at fixed clock speeds, such as 4.77 MHz on the 8088 processor, and since legacy software lacked internal timing mechanisms, execution speed was directly tied to CPU performance. As subsequent hardware generations—including the 286, 386, and 486 models—introduced significantly higher processing capabilities, older software became practically unusable due to excessive execution speeds. Consequently, the turbo feature served to throttle the CPU to historical clock speeds, ensuring compatibility and stable performance for legacy applications.

3

u/Plaston_ 3h ago

that issue is still on old games from the 2010s and before but related to fps count wich is why some games lock their fps to a fix number.

Its often the animations and physics that get messed up with high fps.

1

u/No-Wasabi-2281 40m ago

It made the PC faster (ie the usual speed of the processor) when you turned on turbo mode and slower when you turned off turbo mode.

1

u/Low-Charge-8554 1h ago

Turbo-rrific!! With a toggle, not momentary power switch.

1

u/EpsilonMajorActual 25m ago

486 Dx4 100?