William C. "Bill" Stewart (1950 – August 2009) was an American

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

. Stewart was born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. He founded Stewart Software Company there in 1984 and marketed

Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...

assembly language programs, notably TOOLKIT and the ONLINE 80 Bulletin Board System, for

Radio Shack RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...

Computers running TRSDOS. Later that company became Stewart Computer & Supply, Inc. Switching to 8088 Assembly under

IBM PC DOS IBM PC DOS, an acronym for IBM Personal Computer Disk Operating System, is a discontinued disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. It was manufactured and sold by IBM from the early 1980s into the 2000s. Developed by Microsoft, it was also ...

and

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

, it released many programs via

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

and commercial distribution. His shareware FREE.COM was cited as a top 10 PC utility in

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

in 1987, and was a "Program of the Month" in a publication in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. His commercial programs were oriented towards MS-DOS computer servicing and diagnostics. Commercial products included UNIFORM, a non-destructive reformat for hard drives, CSR, which allowed service shops to archive

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

settings from computers they serviced and restore them when necessary, and Rx, a small

terminate-and-stay-resident program A terminate-and-stay-resident program (commonly TSR) is a computer program running under DOS that uses a system call to return control to DOS as though it has finished, but remains in computer memory so it can be reactivated later. This technique ...

(TSR) which gave plain English explanations to accompany the often cryptic " Abort, Retry or Ignore?" errors generated by DOS by changing it to "Abort, Retry, Ignore or Explain?". Stewart Computer & Supply, Inc was sold in 1993 and Stewart moved to

Fort Myers, Florida Fort Myers (or Ft. Myers) is a city in southwestern Florida and the county seat and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 92,245 in 20 ...

where he continued to write computer diagnostic software for 8088-based machines until 1997, and was a frequent contributor to ''The PC Troubleshooter'' magazine. Later he lived in

Cape Coral, Florida Cape Coral is a city located in Lee County, Florida, United States, on the Gulf of Mexico. Founded in 1957 and developed as a planned community, the city's population has grown to 194,016 as of the 2020 Census, a rise of 26% from the 2010 Census ...

where he was a

ham radio operator An amateur radio operator is someone who uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other amateur operators on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators hav ...

, call sign N4CRO, an infrequent scuba diver and an avid amateur weather enthusiast. From 1994 he worked in law enforcement. Bill died in August 2009 at the age of 59.

References

External links

* American computer programmers 1950 births 2009 deaths {{US-compu-bio-stub