In message , pyotr
filipivich writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" on Sun, 21 Jul 2019
01:18:20 +0100 typed in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general the
following:


Not sure about F keys left versus above. I do remember the left
positioning (hell, I remember from well before PCs altogether), but in
those days I didn't actually use them much: I can't honestly remember,
but if anything I probably found they got in the way (shoving them up
top made me less likely to hit them in error).

The critical element was, the game GATO used them to control speed
and direction. But after I got the PC-AT (with the Intel 286 CPU), it
didn't work. Clock speed was too high, and there is nothing like
trying to control a sub, when even "dead slow" was speedboating round
the map.


I remember a lot of PCs of that era had a "turbo button", which switched
to a faster processor clock speed (or, of course, since most people left
it at that [after all why buy a "fast" PC and not use it] switched to a
slower one). Originally, this button switched back to the original IBM
PC clock speed (based on an NTSC TV crystal I think!) so that any
software that _relied_ on that would work properly; later, it just
switched between maximum and some slower speed, and was soon after that
dropped, as hardly anyone used it.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

In science, the more you know what you're looking at, the more magical it
becomes. - Professor Brian Cox, in RT 2017/7/15-21