Lt. Kernal

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Lt. Kernal

Lt. Kernal was the name given to a SCSI

SCSI

Small Computer System Interface, or SCSI , is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices....
hard drive subsystem developed for the Commodore 64

Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of United States dollar595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of Random-access memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of tha...
and Commodore 128

Commodore 128

The Commodore 128 home computer/personal computer was the last 8-bit machine commercially released by Commodore International . Introduced in January of 1985 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas metropolitan area, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the bestselling Commodore 64....
home computer

Home computer

A home computer was a class of personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles....
s. The original design of both the technically complicated hardware interface

Interface (computer science)

Interface generally refers to an Abstraction_%28computer_science%29 that an entity provides of itself to the outside. This separates the methods of external communication from internal operation, and allows it to be internally modified without affecting the way outside entities interact with it, as well as provide Polymorphism in object-orien...
and equally complex disk operating system came from Lloyd Sponenburgh and Roy Southwick of Fiscal Information, Inc., a now-defunct Florida

Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
-based turnkey

Turnkey

A turnkey or a turnkey project is a type of project that is constructed by a developer and sold or turned over to a buyer in a ready to use condition....
vendor of minicomputer

Minicomputer

Prototype

A prototype is an original type, form, or instance of something serving as a typical example, basis, or standard for other things of the same category....
in 1984 and starting advertising the system for sale early in 1985.

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Encyclopedia

Lt. Kernal was the name given to a SCSI

SCSI

Commodore 64

Commodore 128

Home computer

Interface (computer science)

Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
-based turnkey

Turnkey

A turnkey or a turnkey project is a type of project that is constructed by a developer and sold or turned over to a buyer in a ready to use condition....
vendor of minicomputer

Minicomputer

Prototype

Bulletin board system

SysOp

Sysop is short for "System operator". It is a commonly used term for an administrator of a multi-user website, such as a bulletin board system or special-interest area of an online service....
s of the day, due to its excellent performance and capacious storage (originally 10 megabytes and later extended to as much as 330 megabytes). The subsequent development of a multiplexing accessory allowed one Lt. Kernal to be shared by as many as 16 computers, using a round robin scheduling algorithm

Scheduling algorithm

In computer science, a scheduling algorithm is the method by which Thread , Process or data Flow are given access to system resources . This is usually done to Load balancing a system effectively or achieve a target Quality of service....
. This made the use of the Lt. Kernal with multiple line BBS

Bulletin board system

File:Monochrome-bbs.pngA Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running list of BBS software that allows User to Telecommunication circuit and Logging to the system using a terminal program....
s practical. Later, streaming tape support, using QIC-02 tape cartridges, was added to provide a practical (though costly) backup strategy.

A key feature of the Lt. Kernal was its sophisticated disk operating system, which behaved much like that of the Point 4 minicomputer

Minicomputer

A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems ....
s that Fiscal was reselling in the 1980s. A high degree of control over the Lt. Kernal was possible with simple typed commands, many of which had never been seen before in the eight bit Commodore environment. This, along with a powerful keyed random access filing system, made the Lt. Kernal perform at a level that was generally unmatched by any other hard drive system available for eight bit Commodore computers.

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

Xetec

Xetec was founded in 1983 by Jon Flickinger, and was located in Salina, KS, United States. Before closing in 1995, the company produced many third-party products for the Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST and IBM PC compatible computers....
. Fiscal continued to provide secondary technical support, as well as free DOS 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.

Lt. Kernal

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