In January 1990, Malta's 68-year-old Public Lotto Department, with a population bas of 330,000(annual sales: U.S.$31.4 million) debuted its hybrid on-line/off-line Lotto System. The Department awarded the contract to design, supply and manage the 350 terminal network and central computer site to Megabyte Ltd. who won the tender against stiff competition from the foremost U.S. and European companies in this business. The software that runs on the terminals and the central system was completely developed by Megabyte and has been running without problems for over six years.

In these years computerize Lotto has taken the island by storm. Then new "Super 5/36" lotto features rollover jackpots, pari-mutuel prizes and same day prize pay outs. There has also been a dramatic change from the 67-year-old 5/90 "Italian lotto", in which players scribbled their number choices on pre-printed betting slips and the retailer kept the two carbon copies for validation and archiving. The system processes between 600,000 and 1,000,000 transactions per week, improving customer service, efficiency and profitability.

Megabyte's Lotto System is based on a terminal designed as a standalone off-line model. The terminal uses dual removable magnetic storage media which the retailer must hand deliver to the lottery's headquarters. But any terminal can be put on-line when and as communication lines improve. In the event of a communications failure, an on-line terminal can continue to store records of numbers staked on the disks.

In order to protect the system against fraud, all numbers staked are also archived onto two Write Once Read Many [WORM] optical disk devices, providing two non erasable records. The records also include the serial number of each ticket sold, terminal number and date issued.

On the day of the draw, the lottery processes the storage media received from retailers. Commissions are paid on the spot, rather than several days later, as with the manual lotto system. The same accelerated schedule applies to prize notification.

In 1996, the Lotto Department contracted Megabyte for the second time to design and supply new custom built Lotto terminals. This involved upgrading the terminal and central hardware and software to incorporate new requirements and security features.