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 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.

File	Size	Date
STadel v3.3c	571,133	August, 1991

Main Page