Squiggle
94Feb13 17:59:48 pst From Brent Bottles @ The Anticlimactic Teleservice
As for the question that Levendis posed in Citadel Q&A, "why did you guys write
Cits of your own," there were a few reasons why I wrote Squiggle.
To start out with, I wanted some practice with programming. I had written lots
of small little things, but never a full application of much size. For whatever
reason (I have forgotten), a BBS appealed to me. Everyone knows that the only
BBS worth using is Citadel, so that is why I based mine on Citadel.
I might have just gotten Citadel code and played with it (as many others have
done), but I did not own a C compiler, and I did not know C. I owned a BASIC
compiler, but I didn't want to write it in BASIC for various reasons. So, as I
also owned an assembler, I chose to write it in assembly.
So that's why I started. It got to be an actual usable BBS program in there
somewhere, though nobody ever ran a BBS with it (not even me). I started making
it compatible with DragCit 1.0 networking, but then I got a job.
And that's why I stopped working on it; because I found that I had much less
free time on my hands when I was working full time.
I don't think that there is any code inside of Citadel that could be traced
back to Squiggle. I certainly cannot think of any right now.
94Feb15 05:38:32 pst From Brent Bottles @ The Anticlimactic Teleservice
Actually, Richard, there is no such thing as Squiggle/86.
Upon load, it did processor type detection, and would claim that it was made
for that processor. But it was only one program.
That is, if run on an 8086, it would say "Squiggle/86" and if run on an 8088,
it would way "Squiggle/88" and if run on an NEC V30 it would say "Squiggle/V30"
and if run on an 80486 it would say "Squiggle/486" and so on. History time
again: Norman was the person who tested the 80486 detection code. You could
also override the processor type detection by specifying anything on the
command line starting with a /. It would take up to three characters after the
/ and append them to the name Squiggle. So, for example, you could have a
Squiggle/69 if you were err head...
Just one of the many cutting edge features of the truly cutting edge software
that it was.
Squiggle files
