[plug] Recycled machines

[Jim Householder]

Gavin Chester wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 21:29 +0800, Kai wrote:
>> Mike Holland wrote:
>>> Chris Caston wrote:
>>>
>>>> Well I remember playing Doom, Star Wars Rebel Assault, Return to Zork, 
>>>> various Sierra games, using Grolliers Encylopedia, doing home work  
>>>> and browsing the web and newsgroups on a 386.
>>> Ah, the good old days.
>>> Remember when PCs had a "turbo" button and a 7-segment LED MHz display?
>> Hahahaa, yep.
>>
>> I remember wondering if that button ever actually did anything or if it 
>> was just a gimmick...
> 
> No, it did. I remember toggling it just to see how _slow_ dos3 apps
> could be made to run, for example ;-) Can't remember the exact detail,
> but I think it was something to do with some programs that were still in
> use into the early desktop PC days that needed the processor to be
> clocked down to 8bit, or below a certain MHz threshold so that they
> could run. Something like that. But then we're talking new fangled 286
> PCs, not the glorious old 8086s that existed before hard drives! 
> 

The original PC had a 4.77MHz processor, and some programs used 
instruction loops for timing rather than a hardware clock.  The faster 
processors made such programs rather unusable.

Jim