Lt. Kernal Hard Drive System
Specific System Requirements - Lt. Kernal HD
Xetec's Lt. Kernal Hard Drive system is an excellent choice to run your BBS system on. It supports up to 9 different partitions of disk space called Logical Units, and each of these units has 15 "users" which are like subdirectories. This can mean you can have up to 135 separate file directories. Color 64 will NOT be able to use the Lt. Kernal and RAMDOS at the same time, if you have an REU in configuration with the HD.
To use the Lt. Kernal HD on the 64, you must have the HIRAM connector hooked up, as described in the Lt. Kernal manual. If you do not have the HIRAM connection, then the system will not work correctly. If you are using a Commodore 128 in 64 mode, then the ribbon cable connecting the computer and the Host Adaptor takes care of the HIRAM signal.
Another thing you need to do is run your CONFIGURE program and make sure that the NMI TRAP setting is off (set to 0) for the Commodore 64 mode of the Lt. Kernal. If this is not set to 0, then your users may experience "line noise" when calling your system.
And finally, you need to make sure that you answer "Y" to the Lt. Kernal question in your boot-maker program. If this is not set to "Y", then modem communications will be garbled.
Color 64 can access any configuration that you may have in mind through the "ldlu" and "i" drive commands. The "ldlu" command's syntax is l<device><LU><USER>. For example, to access LU 2, USER 5 the command would be "l825", assuming you want to use device 8. For users 10 through 15, you use the hexadecimal equivalent of A through F. For example, LU 3, USER 11 would be "l83b".
For LU's 2 through 9, you need to add an "i" command to the drive initialization command in setup. If you wanted to use LU 3, then the command would be "i3". When both commands are put together, the whole command would look like "l83b!i3", if you wanted to use LU 3, USER 11. Notice that you separate individual disk commands with an "!” exclamation point.
Faster Disk Access
If your Lt.Kernal HD uses DOS version 7.1 or greater, then you can achieve faster disk access in some of the overlays by merging the following files into the specified overlays. These merges are optional, so they are not absolutely required for your system to function normally:
- lkf.init -> √bbs.init
- lkf.msgs -> √bbs.msgs
- lkf.xfer -> √bbs.xfer
- lkf.ovl -> √bbs.ovl
- lkf.nw1 -> √bbs.nw1
- lkf.nw2 -> √bbs.nw2
These routines replace the standard free blocks routine with a custom Lt. Kernal command. The routines assume that your Lt. Kernal is being used as device 8. Remember: The "lkf" merges are for systems that use DOS version 7.1 or greater!