The first computer I used was a 286 XT (or AT?), and it had a turbo. I remember playing a few games on it where the turbo button came in handy.<p>One specifically that I remember was called freefall, and simulated diving into a cavern. You had to move the ascii character representing yourself back and forth to avoid the cavern walls as you fell. Simple, but fun.
Yes.<p>Elite was very hard to play on some machines if they didn't have a turbo button. (To turn off turbo, and put the machine in a nice 12 MHz.)<p>Later machines kept the button, but either just hooked it up to a display or even left it disconnected. Cases could fit different motherboards so it's handy to have the button for the older motherboards.
When I was very young, we had a computer which had this button. I always wondered why pressing it would change HI to LO, as the name of the button suggested otherwise. I never really used it as my few games worked fine without it. I was too young to remember the name of the computer, and we got rid of it long ago.
I opened up my PC (486dx) and found that the Turbo button had been disconnected, and (obviously) made absolutely no difference whether it was pressed or not. I never really investigated further.