Mark Williams Company

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The Mark Williams Company was a software company based in Chicago .

Originally a paint manufacturer operated under the name. Its owner closed the company for reasons of age and handed the remains to his son Robert "Bob" Swartz . He opened the software company under the old company in 1980. On February 1, 1995, the company was insolvent. It never had more than 20 employees. The rights to the company's products passed to the bank, which later, u. a. resold to a company called Open Coherent LLC .

Products

The more well-known products in the company's 15-year history included:

Coherent

The first affordable Unix clone for inexpensive PC hardware : The development of Coherent , mainly by four employees, took place from around 1981 on a DEC PDP-11 /45, a little later porting to Motorola 68000 and Zilog Z8001 / 8002 , from 1982 on Intel x86 . This was a mission u. a. possible on the IBM PC platform and on the Commodore 900 , on which early versions of Linux were later created. A version for use on the IBM PC platform was on the market in the summer of 1983 for about $ 500 before the launch of an IBM-owned Unix product. but was not yet error-free. Affordable competing products remained rare in the years that followed. The company's management established a design guideline that no code from the Unix from Bell Laboratories to be reproduced could be used, which was verified during several visits by Dennis Ritchie . This is how the Coherent C compiler came about with the DECUS C compiler written in assembler by Dave Conroy. In the later legal proceedings between SCO and IBM for the property rights to Unix, these checks were used as an example of the fact that it is possible to create an operating system comparable to Unix without using the original Bell Laboratories code.

csd

The first C source code debugger

Let's C

The first affordable professional C - compiler for the IBM PC

Mark Williams C for the Atari ST

Mark Williams C for the Atari ST, the professional C compiler for the Atari ST, replaced the Alcyon C compiler in the official software development kit distributed by Atari itself. The manufacturer's product, which had become known in the minicomputer scene for its C compiler for IBM PCs with source code debuggers, was not available for the Atari platform until June 1986. In a comparison test, a relatively error-free and complete command line operation, the customer service that can be reached via a free telephone number and the source code debugger contained in the package as well as the installation program were highlighted. The documentation was considered extensive and sufficient, but linguistically there was definitely room for improvement. The package did not support work in the GEM graphical user interface, but the source code created could also be used on other platforms such as IBM PC or VAX together with the manufacturer's C compiler products of the same name. The package included a MicroEMACS editor, the working environment was comparable to that of Unix computers, and small projects could be compiled directly from floppy disk. Version 1.0 / 1.1 appeared in 1986, Version 2 appeared in 1987. Version 2.1 was sold in Germany from June 1988, Version 3.0 was on the market in October 1988, but was not compatible with ANSI-C.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Posting by Dennis Ritchie from April 10, 1998 in Usenet on alt.folklore.computers, in a report on groklaw.net, seen July 8, 2012 (English)
  2. ↑ a b Mark Williams Company out of business , message from Marc Swartz in the USENET newsgroup comp.os.coherent , on mwat.de, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  3. ↑ a b c Reaction to the sad news , posting by William Lederer on April 4, 1995 on Usenet in the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers, on neil.franklin.ch, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  4. ↑ Posting by Bob Swartz on March 31, 2007 on Usenet at comp.os.coherent, viewed July 7, 2012 (English)
  5. ↑ a b Report by Tom Duff, In: Peter H. Salus: The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin , Chapter 15: Commercial UNIXes to BSDI ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign website, viewed July 8, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / icims.csl.uiuc.edu
  6. ↑ Two years of development, market entry 1983, according to Ken Brown and me ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , viewed on minix3.org, July 8, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.minix3.org
  7. ↑ Posting by dgary in the newsgroup net.micro.pc on Usenet from September 22, 1983, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  8. ↑ a b Experience with Unix on PC XT , posted by Richard Stevens on September 21, 1983 in the net.micro.pc newsgroup, viewed July 8, 2012
  9. ↑ Phil Hughes: Putting Linux in Perspective , In: Linux Journal , viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  10. ↑ Randall Howard: Dennis MacAlister Ritchie (1941-2011) - My Inspiration by a Great Man Who Quietly Shaped an Industry , report from January 1, 2012 on randalljhoward.com, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  11. ^ TD Brown: C For Fortran Programmers . Silicon Press, 190, ISBN 0-929306-01-5 ( full text in Google book search). (referred to as a well-known C compiler, test in PC-Magazin 7, No. 15 from September 13, 1988)
  12. ↑ a b Kurt Diedrich: The Mark Williams C-Compiler from Markt & Technik , review in Atari Magazine , June 1988
  13. ↑ Mark Williams 'C' , reviewed in ST Computer magazine , February 1987
  14. ↑ a b c Arick Anders: ON DISK! ST C'S: A New Look: The Language of Preference for ST Development , comparative test in STart , 3rd year, No. 3, October 1988, p. 78, viewed July 7, 2012 (English)
  15. ↑ Atari ST / TT / Falcon History: Software Development  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at ataricommunity.com (English)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ataricommunity.com  
  16. ↑ Arick Anders, Michael Bendio: Which C for me? Start's first C Comparison , In: START Vol. 1 No. 2 / Fall 1986, p. 62 (English)
  17. ↑ a b c Arick Anders: Mark Williams C & Menu article on Williams C 1.0 / 1.1 in: START , Vol. 1, No. 3, Winter 1986, p. 104, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  18. ↑ Mark Williams compiler is available as a cross compiler for the microchips 68000/68020 Z8001 / Z8002 and 80286/8086. It runs under VAX / VMS and Ultrix, AT / MS DOS, Xenix and Unix V as well as on Apollo-Domain under Aegis and on Motorola workstations under Versados. See in the news  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Computerwoche of March 4th, 1988, seen July 8th, 2012@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.computerwoche.de  
  19. ↑ Marcelo Merino: Das Sprachgenie: All programming languages: 'C' is not just a letter , In: ST Computer , Issue 3, 1987, on stcarchiv.de, seen July 8, 2012
  20. ↑ a b Arick Anderson: Mark Williams C 2.0 , Article In: START Vol. 2 No. 2, Fall 1987, p. 69, viewed July 8, 2012 (English)
  21. ↑ R. Covert: Review Lattice C 5 , In: ST Report No 701 , viewed July 8, 2012 (English)