Carlos Reyes: Quick Menu, Rent Wars
Carlos Reyes wrote the game Rent Wars for the Atari 8-bit computers for First Star Software, which was never officially released but found its way onto the Internet years later. He also wrote Quick Menu, a 384-byte program that would display a menu of programs on a floppy disk and let the user choose one to run. The program was designed to fit into a floppy's three boot sectors, so it didn't eat into any of the usable space on the disk. The program was a popular interface to distribute disks of pirated programs, but most people didn't know that Carlos was the author — there was no room for his name in the tiny program. Carlos has found the source code and released it into the public domain.
This interview took place on August 3, 2018. In it, we discuss Jerry White, Fernando Herrera, and Bill Wilkinson, whom I have previously interviewed.
A video version of this interview is available.
Video version of this interview
Quick Menu source code
AtariAge discussion about Rent Wars
Rent Wars at AtariMania
Rent Wars play video
Carlos on LinkedIn
ANTIC Interview 124 - Jerry White, Atari author and programmer
ANTIC Interview 7 - The Atari 8-bit Podcast - Bill Wilkinson, OSS
Fernando Herrera interview