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Appendix B: History of the Citadel BBS Program 173
Appendix B History of the Citadel BBS Program
[ Note: This Appendix is an amended version of `history.doc', which was
in the STadel documentation and which appears to have been passed down by
each successive author. ]
1) CP/M Citadel (CrT/David Mitchell)
Citadel was written in mid-December 1981 by CrT. Miraculously, it
ran three days unattended over New Year's, collecting some
remarkably favorable reactions. During the months that it ran at
633-3282 (ODD-DATA), Citadel became one of the more popular BBs in
town, and there was some disappointment when a hardware failure
forced the system down in February of 1982. But in January CrT
had published the source code in BDS C, putting it in the public
domain.
David Mitchell brought up the next incarnation of the Citadel
program in April of 1982, running on hardware provided by Richard
Knox. Called the Island Communication System, it is located on
Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. ICS has about 30 regular users
and about 120 log entries. Newcomers find it easy to learn, and
often leave messages praising it. Some of the system's daily
users are in Boston.
Citadel is descended from DandD.pas, an adventure game
editor/driver. It is arranged as a series of rooms, starting with
the LOBBY. In each room the user can read existing messages and
leave more. There may be up to 128 rooms in the current
implementation. The system was brought up with only one room, the
LOBBY. Additional rooms were created by the users, with room
names appropriate to the topics covered.
This is being written (82Dec07) as the Version 2 beta-test goes
out. Version 1 got a friendly reception and had relatively few
bugs. We'll see if this is a trend or fluctuation...
Environment: Citadel has had a checkered past. It first ran on a
64K Heath H89 with Magnolia CP/M, Hayes Smartmodem (plus an
acoustic on another port) and BDS C V1.32. Further development
was done under BDS C 1.4x on a TRS-80 with Omikron CP/M, a Teletek
FDC-1, and a Furgeson Big Board. At present the ICS
implementation runs on the FDC-1, while development is done on the
Big Board. Version 2 was tested on the original H89, now with
dual 8" SSDD drives :-) and a printer, Magnolia CP/M V2.223 :-( ,
and BDS C 1.46.
Starting with the 82Jan posting on Seattle's MailBoard (thanks
John!), various fragments of Version 1 seem to have percolated
around the country. This version 2 release should supercede them
and save people the frustration of trying to make sense out of
them.
2) Citadel-86 (Hue, Jr.)
Appendix B: History of the Citadel BBS Program 174
Having obtained Citadel 2.10 from CUG through SuperComp, and then
having helped upgrade it to Citadel 2.40 using, at various times,
a H89 and a Z-100, Citadel-86 for MS-DOS 2.xx was developed in
order to ... um. Well, in any case, the first version of
Citadel-86 went up on the 8088 side of a Z-100 in the Fall of '84,
using MS-DOS 2.13.
As the months passed and as the whims hit the translator,
Citadel-86 came closer and closer to being functionally identical
to Citadel 2.40, and in January '85 the final downloading stuff
was added, thus coming close 'nuff to Citadel 2.40's main programs
for the translator. During March and April of '85, the utilities
of Citadel 2.40 underwent translation and by mid-April, the last
of these utilities had been translated and at least superficially
tested, thus completing the Citadel translation process (thank
ghod).
Now all that remains is isolating and killing the final few bugs,
some of which the translator is certain are resident in the
compiler in use (otherwise he'd have to admit to having made
mistakes, lord forbid!).
Oh, and by the way, the name Citadel-86 was the suggestion of a
certain Lord Castleregh, and was selected after a polling process
of the first Citadel-86 system (Test System).
3) STadel (orc [David Parsons])
STadel was ported from the 2.12/2.14 version of Citadel-86 in
December '86. A fairly easy port, all things considered; since
the code had already been ported from one machine (CP/M-land with
all of the oddities inherent there) to another (MSDOS), some of
the porting difficulties had already been worked out. When
released to the public, the program rapidly became very popular
around the USA, Canada, and elsewhere. This led to all sorts of
interesting problems, because I decided to drive STadel the way I
wanted, rather than trying to follow the lead of Citadel-86, which
was not evolving the way I wanted to see citadel evolve.
Quite a few people have helped with STadel. Dale Schumacher
(Dalnefre') wrote/ported a UUCP packet-driver which I used as a
kernel for my UUCP mail gateway, Jay Johnson has provided quite a
bit of useful advice and code fragments from his implementation
of Citadel for the Amiga, and Hue, Jr. continues to diddle C-86,
providing me with a endless source of headaches..., umm, er,
inspiration.
STadel has diverged greatly from C-86. Version 3.1 saw the
addition of forwarded roomsharing in a form completely
incompatable with C-86, the command set has diverged in many ways,
STadel now supports (3.0) a mode where the user has to enter login
name and password to gain access to the system, (3.1) a way to do
networking with other systems when the receiving system is not* in
network mode, (3.2) a process for running other programs from
inside citadel (including external autodialers for networking via
PC-Pursuit and external protocols for file transfers), and (3.2) a
Appendix B: History of the Citadel BBS Program 175
process to route network mail a'la UUCP/Usenet.
In the spring of 1988, STadel was ported back onto the IBM PC; a
decision that was provoked by my getting sick and tired of the
Atari ST world and buying a PC clone to get out of it. This had
the undesirable effect of totally estranging any relationship with
the author of citadel-86. In summer of 1988, I converted it from
public domain to shareware as the result of attempted legal action
against me.
Currently STadel runs on MS-DOS computers (the IBM PC in native
mode, other computers if they are supplied with FOSSIL serial i/o
drivers) and the Atari ST. A port to the Commodore Amiga is
currently underway, and ports to the Apple Macintosh and to Unix
are planned.
Extensive functional additions to the network are planned, as
well as a fido-net gateway program and a multiuser version. The
headache factor will probably make the fidonet gateway and the
multiuser system commercial.
4) Fnordadel (Adrian Ashley and Royce Howland)
In January of 1989 we obtained the source to STadel V3.3b-199 from orc.
We started diddling around with it, putting in little feeps here and there.
After doing many diddles to it, not the least of which was switching
from gawd-awful Alcyon C to Mark Williams C, we finally began some fairly
serious development at around the start of 1990. As this is being written
(August of 1991) we're putting the final touches on the second public
release (v1.32).
Among the major changes and improvements are such things as improved net
compatibility with Citadel-86, and the elimination of many inherent limits
such as 58 messages per room, 64 rooms per system, et cetera; as well,
the Reference Manual is a substantial departure from past STadel practice.
More recent additions include many security measures, a full-fledg