Lt. Kernal is a SASI

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

subsystem A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

developed for the

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data bu ...

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

and

Commodore 128 The Commodore 128, also known as the C128, is the last 8-bit home computer that was commercially released by Commodore Business Machines (CBM). Introduced in January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas, it appeared three years after its predecessor, t ...

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

s. The Lt. Kernal is capable of a data transfer rate of more than per second and 65 kilobytes per second in Commodore 128 fast mode.

History

The original design of both the technically complicated

hardware interface Components of an electrical circuit are electrically connected if an electric current can run between them through an electrical conductor. An electrical connector is an electromechanical device used to create an electrical connection between ...

and

disk operating system A disk operating system (DOS) is a computer operating system that requires a disk or other direct-access storage device as secondary storage. A DOS provides a file system and a means for loading and running computer program, programs stored on th ...

came from Lloyd Sponenburgh and Roy Southwick of Fiscal Information, Inc., a now-defunct

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

-based

turnkey A turnkey, a turnkey project, or a turnkey operation (also spelled turn-key) is a type of project that is constructed so that it can be sold to any buyer as a completed product. This is contrasted with build to order, where the constructor builds ...

vendor of

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

-based medical information systems. Fiscal demonstrated a working

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...

in 1984 and starting advertising the system for sale early in 1985. It immediately found a niche with some Commodore software developers and

bulletin board A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. ...

sysop A sysop (, an abbreviation of system operator) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community.Jansen, E. & James, V. (2002). NetLingo: the Internet dictionary. Ne ...

s. It was released over the years in capacities of 10 megabytes to 330 megabytes. The subsequent development of a multiplexing accessory allows one Lt. Kernal to be shared by up to 16 computers, using a round robin

scheduling algorithm In computing, scheduling is the action of assigning resources to perform tasks. The resources may be processors, network links or expansion cards. The tasks may be threads, processes or data flows. The scheduling activity is carried out by ...

. This makes the use of the Lt. Kernal with multiple line BBSs practical. Later, streaming tape support, using QIC-02 tape cartridges, was added to provide a premium backup strategy. Fiscal built the units to order until late 1986, at which time the decision was made to turn over the production, marketing and customer support to Xetec Inc. Fiscal continued to provide secondary technical support, as well as free

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

upgrades, until December 1991, at which time production of new Lt. Kernal systems ceased. Following the shutdown of Xetec in 1995, private support of the Lt. Kernal was carried on for several years by Ron Fick until his untimely death in 1999.

Overview

Lt. Kernal uses a 5"

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

with a capacity of 10 MB and later up to 330 MB. The hard drive uses MFM to encode data and an

ST-506 The ST-506 and ST-412 (sometimes written ST506 and ST412) were early hard disk drive products introduced by Seagate in 1980 and 1981 respectively, that later became construed as hard disk drive interfaces: the ST-506 disk interface and the ST- ...

interface to the OMTI 5300 intelligent SASI controller. This controller board presents a SASI (SCSI) externally that is connected via a cable with DB-25 connectors in both ends. That is plugged into the host adapter that handles the SASI signals and protocol with a controller that plugs directly into the 44-pin

ROM cartridge A ROM cartridge, usually referred to in context simply as a cartridge, cart, cassette, or card, is a replaceable part designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, ...

expansion slot in the form of a physical

edge connector An edge connector is the portion of a printed circuit board (PCB) consisting of signal trace, traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching jack (connector), socket. The edge connector is a money-saving devic ...

that mates the controller board to the system bus of the host computer. The connection between the computer host adapter (DB-25F) and the hard drive unit consists of a cable with two

DB-25 The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smallest connectors used on computer systems. Description, ...

connectors. A key feature of the Lt. Kernal is its sophisticated disk operating system, which behaves much like that of the Point 4

s that Fiscal was reselling in the 1980s. A high degree of control over the Lt. Kernal is possible with simple typed commands, many of which had never been seen before in the

Commodore environment. It features a keyed random access filing system.

Reception

The Lt. Kernal was favorably and comprehensively reviewed in ''

The Transactor ''The Transactor'' was a computer magazine directed at users of Commodore home computers. In contrast to other Commodore-focused publications such as '' Commodore Magazine'' and '' COMPUTE!'s Gazette'', ''The Transactors popularity was based ...

'', which praised the drive's speed, storage capacity, and ease of use. Some criticism was levied at the product's incomplete documentation, its drain on the resources of the host computer (particularly with the Commodore 64, whose limited memory requires frequent

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme that allows the physical Computer memory, memory used by a program to be non-contiguous. This also helps avoid the problem of memory fragmentation and requiring compact ...

of the DOS), and the lack of an automated backup utility. The review noted the drive's particular suitability for professional programmers, business users, and BBS

References

External links

Lt. Kernal Data Archive
{{Commodore disk drives, HD Commodore 64 Hard disk computer storage CBM storage devices -

History

Overview

Reception

See also

References

External links