The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(later moved to Northbrook, Illinois) that created Coherent, one of the first

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s for IBM PCs and several C programming language

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

s. It was founded by Robert Swartz in 1977 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 Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

with his father's help and the company became known as the Mark Williams Company. Mark Williams won a patent lawsuit centered on 'byte ordering'. Separately and at that time,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

had made serious inroads in the UNIX clone market. Since Coherent was a commercially available package and Linux was distributed freely on the Internet via their GNU public license, Coherent sales plummeted and Swartz had no choice but to cease operations in 1995.

Products

* Produced '' Coherent'', a clone of Unix. * ''csd'', C source

debugger A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" program). The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled conditions that permit the programmer to track its executi ...

. * ''Let's C'', low-cost professional C

for the IBM PC. * ''Mark Williams C'' for CP/M-86. * ''Mark Williams C'' for the Atari ST, first major C programming environment for the ST computers. * ''XYBasic'', a process control BASIC running on CP/M that could be burned on to memory (

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power s ...

) and run on an

8080 The Intel 8080 (''"eighty-eighty"'') is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibil ...

standalone processor.

References

External links

START Vol. 1 No. 3
''Mark Williams C & Menu'' by Arick Anders

''Mark Williams C 2.0'' by Arick Anderson
Mark Williams Company documentation
Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1980 American companies disestablished in 1995 Unix history American companies established in 1980 {{ict-company-stub