Talk:Lt. Kernal

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Article name[edit]

Someone moved this article from Lt. Kernal to Commodore Lt Kernal on the grounds of consistency. I moved the article back to the original name because

The name of the product is the Lt. Kernal, not the Commodore Lt. Kernal; and
Commodore never manufactured or marketed this product.

That the drive was intended for use with Commodore computers should have no bearing on the title of this article. —Psychonaut 00:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, there were two versions of the Lt. Kernal: the Fiscal Information version and the Xetec version. The overwhelming majority were built by Xetec (any system whose serial number started with 8700), so perhaps a link called "Xetec Lt. Kernal" should be created as well. Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 06:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have created the redirect as suggested. -- Mecandes (talk) 14:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Price[edit]

Does anyone have a record of the original price of the Lt. Kernal hard drives? It would be nice to include that with this article. (I seem to recall a friend buying a used 20mb version for $1000, but that's just my poor memory giving a vague ballpark idea) -- Mecandes (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I purchased a 20 MB Lt. Kernal for my C-128 in mid-1987 and paid 969 USD for it. In mid-1988, I acquired a 40 MB version for the same price. The cost decreased several times during the life of the product as the wholesale cost of embedded SCSI drives went down. Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 20:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Awful mess[edit]

Someone edited this article into an awful mess by copying out-of-context information from Floodgap and other sources. The description of the Lt. Kernal as posted at Floodgap, is poorly-worded, plus has a number of outright errors that should have been fixed 15 years ago (the Lt. Kernal site at Floodgap stopped being maintained when its author passed away some years ago).

Few individuals during the life of the Lt. Kernal had access to detailed technical information about the system (intentionally so on the part of Fiscal Information), especially at the hardware level. Unsurprisingly, much of what has been published on-line about the Lt. Kernal is incorrect.

For example, following Xetec’s takeover of production, all 20 MB Lt. Kernal systems were produced with embedded-controller SCSI drives (mostly Miniscribe units). Some 40 and 80 MB units were built with ST-506 mechanisms and OMTI controllers. Use of the ST-506/OMTI combination ended in late 1989 as higher-capacity, embedded-controller SCSI drives became readily available. Yet, whomever butchered up this article apparently didn’t know that.

There are a number of other errors, but I am not going to fix any of them. This is what I don’t like about Wikipedia—uninformed edits and no way to prevent them, and is why I discontinued being involved.

Bigdumbdinosaur (talk) 04:45, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]