Mark Williams Company
Encyclopedia
The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois (later moved to Northbrook, Illinois
) that created Coherent
, one of the first Unix-like
operating system
s for IBM PC
s and several C programming language
compiler
s. It was founded by Robert Swartz in 1980 and discontinued operations in 1995. The name comes from the middle name of Robert Swartz's father, William Mark Swartz.
Robert Swartz moved the company (originally producing a soft drink
called Dr. Enuf
) into software with his father's help and the company became known as the Mark Williams Company.
Mark Williams successfully won a patent lawsuit centered around 'byte ordering'. Separately and at that time, Linux had made serious inroads in the UNIX clone market. Being that Coherent was a commercially available package and Linux was distributed freely on the Internet via their GNU public license, Coherent sales plummeted and Mr. Swartz had no choice but to cease operations in 1995.
Northbrook, Illinois
Northbrook is a village located at the northern edge of Cook County, Illinois, which is also a North Shore suburb of Chicago. The population was 33,170 at the 2010 census....
) that created Coherent
Coherent (operating system)
The Coherent operating system was a Version 7 Unix clone by the now-defunct Mark Williams Company, originally produced for the PDP-11 in 1980. A port was introduced in 1983 as the first Unix-like system for IBM PC compatible computers....
, one of the first Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s for IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
s and several C programming language
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s. It was founded by Robert Swartz in 1980 and discontinued operations in 1995. The name comes from the middle name of Robert Swartz's father, William Mark Swartz.
Robert Swartz moved the company (originally producing a soft drink
Soft drink
A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
called Dr. Enuf
Dr. Enuf
Dr. Enuf is a brand of soft drink bottled by Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City, Tennessee. It is a lemon-lime flavored drink , and is fortified with several water-soluble vitamins. Its marketing slogan is "Enuf is Enough!"Dr...
) into software with his father's help and the company became known as the Mark Williams Company.
Mark Williams successfully won a patent lawsuit centered around 'byte ordering'. Separately and at that time, Linux had made serious inroads in the UNIX clone market. Being that Coherent was a commercially available package and Linux was distributed freely on the Internet via their GNU public license, Coherent sales plummeted and Mr. Swartz had no choice but to cease operations in 1995.
Products
- Produced CoherentCoherent (operating system)The Coherent operating system was a Version 7 Unix clone by the now-defunct Mark Williams Company, originally produced for the PDP-11 in 1980. A port was introduced in 1983 as the first Unix-like system for IBM PC compatible computers....
, a clone of Unix. - csd the world's first C source debuggerDebuggerA debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...
. - Let's C the first low-cost professional C compilerCompilerA compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
for the IBM PC. - Mark Williams C for the Atari STAtari STThe Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
, first major C programming environment for the ST computers. - XYBasic, a process control basic running on CP/MCP/MCP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
that could be burned on to memory (EPROMEPROMAn EPROM , or erasable programmable read only memory, is a type of memory chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. In other words, it is non-volatile. It is an array of floating-gate transistors individually programmed by an electronic device that supplies higher voltages...
) and run on an 8080Intel 8080The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility...
standalone processor. http://www.mindspring.com/~nesssoft/resume.html
External links
- START Vol. 1 No. 3 Mark Williams C & Menu by Arick Anders
- START Vol. 2 No. 2 Mark Williams C 2.0 by Arick Anderson