The Mark Williams Company
And the COHERENT operating system
=================================
Feb 17, 2024

William Mark Schwartz was a chemist living in Chicago and running a
chemical company called the Mark Williams Chemical Company. Some of
his employees complained of issues like fatigue, headaches, and
indigestion which prompted him to create a beverage that would solve
these issues. These complaints were more of the "man, I am tired"
variety and not that Schwartz was working them to death. This
beverage was Dr. Enuf, likely developed in 1949, for which Schwartz
applied for a trademark on the 19th of May in 1951. The trademark was
granted on the 2nd of December in 1952, and the beverage was first
sold commercially on the 4th of April in 1951. The company produced
paints and other products as well (being a chemical company), but Dr.
Enuf is the most famous. The rights to the formula for Dr. Enuf were
eventually bought by Charles Gordon of Tri-City Beverage in Johnson
City, Tennessee.

William Mark Schwartz's son, Robert Schwartz, didn't wish to follow
his father into chemistry. He was a software developer, and he wanted
to move the company into that field. Specifically, Robert Schwartz
saw the introduction of the microprocessor and early microcomputers
as having extreme potential. This transition occurred in 1977 and the
"Chemical" was dropped from the name, and the new Mark Williams
Company was headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois.

Logo of the Mark WIlliams Company
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Stephen A. Ness joined the computer science department of Stanford
University as a graduate student in the autumn of 1968.
Unfortunately, his interested began to fade, so he spent quite a bit
of time going to movies. He started working at the Festival Cinema in
Palo Alto sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms, and running the
projectors. He was a movie buff and this worked for him for some
time. As his interest in working at the theater was beginning to
wane, he began to long for a job in software development. In early
February of 1977, Donald Knuth paid a visit to the theater and asked
Ness what he was up to, Ness told him about his job search. The next
day, Knuth got a call from Schwartz. Schwartz was searching for a
programmer and Knuth provided Schwartz with Ness's number.

The start of the microcomputer world was dominated by BASIC. More
particularly, it was dominated by Microsoft BASIC, and Schwartz
wanted to compete. Ness told Schwartz that he could build a BASIC
interpreter in about four months, which was just a guess on Ness's
part. He hated BASIC, but he was familiar enough with it, and he
really wanted the job. On top of that, Schwartz was letting him work
from home. With both parties satisfied, work began. Of course, this
"working from home" was complicated. Disk drives of any kind were
expensive and difficult to come by, so Ness commuted from Palo Alto
to Pacific Grove where he used Gary Kildall's computers until he
purchased his own machine and disk drive later in the year. The BASIC
that Ness built for the Mark Williams Company was XYBASIC.

The XYBASIC manual cover, from Stephen Ness via nesssoftware.com
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Getting a start early on in the computer revolution with a BASIC was
a good idea. BASIC was everywhere, and it was a product that would
sell. Revenues from XYBASIC allowed the company to expand into
operating systems. MWC purchased a PDP-11 in the late 1970s and began
working on a UNIX clone. This would allow them, just as XYBASIC did,
to offer a stellar product at a price far lower than any of the
competition. COHERENT was first sold through OEMs for PDP-11
minicomputers in 1980. However, it was quickly ported to the Zilog
Z8000, the Motorola 68000, and the 8086. It was offered at retail to
owners of machines utilizing these CPUs in the spring of 1983. One
OEM who picked up COHERENT was Commodore.

Announcment in BYTE, February 1984
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Announcement in BYTE, June 1984
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The workstation Commodore was building was the C900. This system
offered a 1024x800 display on a screen of either fourteen or twenty
inches, a 20MB HDD, a 1.2MB five and quarter inch floppy disk drive,
two RS232 ports, a Centronics port, an IEEE-488 port, 512K RAM, and
the COHERENT operating system version 2.3 with both BASIC and C. The
C900 could be expanded with hard disk upgrades up to 67MB, memory up
to 2MB, and RS232 port count up to eight (for a total of eight
terminals for concurrent multi-user support). On the software side,
add-ons included: Pascal, COBOL, plotting software, and graphical
terminal support. The C900 was built in Germany with a US release
scheduled for the third quarter of 1985. Pricing started around $2700
(about $7740 in 2024).

Commodore 900, image from vintagecomputer.ca
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Unfortunately, the C900 project was canceled with very few units
having made it to market. Commodore's focus shifted to Amiga, and
their UNIX workstation aspirations disappeared.

Thankfully, the IBM PC and its clones were selling well and COHERENT
was also present there for $500 (about $1433 in 2024) requiring a
minimum of an IBM PC with a hard disk. With just an IBM PC and a hard
disk, COHERENT could support three concurrent users with terminals
attached via serial ports.

Ad from BYTE, February 1984
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Given that UNIX licenses were prohibitively expensive during this
time period, COHERENT was quite a good deal. Adding that it included
both a C compiler and a BASIC compiler, COHERENT was easily the most
affordable workstation operating system and software development
suite available at the time. As for what COHERENT really offered, it
was essentially V7 UNIX complete with nroff, diff, sed, ed, awk, lex,
yacc, db, man, bc, make, the Bourne shell, and other expected
utilities. This system was packed onto seven double-sided floppy
disks, and packaged with a manual.

Of course, AT&T didn't exactly love the idea of someone offering a
UNIX-like operating system for substantially less money while also
not paying them their due. So it was that around the time that the PC
port was made, AT&T sent Dennis Ritchie went to the Mark Williams
Company offices in Northbrook to ascertain whether or not COHERENT
represented an instance of intellectual property theft. According to
Ritchie, the offices were in an industrial area and the feel of the
premises hadn't strayed far from that of a paint company. As for the
investigation of COHERENT, Mark Williams Company would not allow AT&T
to have a look at their source code, and therefore the most that
Ritchie could do was look around the system. He had notes with him
about specific things that could indicate a direct copy without much
doubt, but that was the most he could do. His conclusion is that
COHERENT was made with considerable study of AT&T UNIX, but that it
wasn't a direct copy. He stated:

> It was very hard to believe that Coherent and its basic
> applications were not created without considerable study of the OS
> code and details of its applications. Looking at various corners
> convinced me that I couldn't find anything that was copied. It
> might have been that some parts were written with our source
> nearby, but at least the effort had been made to rewrite. If it
> came to it, I could never honestly testify that my opinion was that
> what they generated was irreproducible from the manual.

Given that the making of a UNIX-like operating system required a C
compiler, the MWC C compiler was quickly ported to other systems and
offered as a standalone product starting in 1981. Porting the
compiler to MS-DOS was a given as IBM compatibles running MS-DOS
dominated the market by the middle of the 1980s and COHERENT was
offered for those machines. MWC offered their C compiler for MS-DOS
at a price of just $75 (around $254 in 2024) and an advanced
interactive debugger was offered for another $75.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>COHERENT version 4 was released in May of 1992 for $100 (around $219
>in 2024). This version made COHERENT a fully 32 bit operating system
>and required at least an Intel 80386 CPU and 1MB of RAM. This version
>also brought official support for X Windows and MGR to COHERENT for
>the first time. This version was roughly compatible with UNIX SVR3.

I bought Coherent from a local (Berlin) bookstore.
Don't know the version, but it might have been in 1992.
Then, on Coherent, I would use

/etc/disable /dev/com1r
/usr/local/bin/kermit
set line /dev/com1r
set speed 9600
serve

, and IIRC in this way I was able to transfer data with my Amiga,
where another Kermit was running.

IIRC, I also used a Coherent command "dos" to transfer files
to an MS-DOS system on the same computer.

In the end, I might not have done much with Coherent, but it was
a way to own something "UNIX like" before Linux (first published
1991-09-17) became popular.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>COHERENT version 4 was released in May of 1992 for $100 (around $219
>in 2024). This version made COHERENT a fully 32 bit operating system
>and required at least an Intel 80386 CPU and 1MB of RAM. This version
>also brought official support for X Windows and MGR to COHERENT for
>the first time. This version was roughly compatible with UNIX SVR3.

BTW: Probably "X Window" (the X Window System) is meant above,
not "X Windows".

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
> The Mark Williams Company
> And the COHERENT operating system
> =================================

I used Coherent 286 then 386 until MWC Folded, I learned a
lot with it and developed some items for work with it.

To bad they could not succeed, but the Linux juggernaut got
too much for MWC :(

FWIW, comp.os.coherent is still a bit active and the source
was released recently.

--
csh(1) - "An elegant shell, for a more... civilized age."
- Paraphrasing Star Wars

On 25 Mar 2024 06:54:48 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote in
<X-20240325075426@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>:

> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>>COHERENT version 4 was released in May of 1992 for $100 (around $219
>>in 2024). This version made COHERENT a fully 32 bit operating system
>>and required at least an Intel 80386 CPU and 1MB of RAM. This version
>>also brought official support for X Windows and MGR to COHERENT for
>>the first time. This version was roughly compatible with UNIX SVR3.
>
> BTW: Probably "X Window" (the X Window System) is meant above,
> not "X Windows".

BTDT: it was known as "X Windows", not "X Window".

But officially, it was (and still is) "X" or "The X Window System".

(I've been seeing a lot of folks refer to it as "X Window"
on Usenet lately -- you kids get off my lawn!)

--
-v

In article <utsq5g$14tqr$2@dont-email.me>, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:
>On 25 Mar 2024 06:54:48 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote in
><X-20240325075426@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>:
>
>> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
>>>COHERENT version 4 was released in May of 1992 for $100 (around $219
>>>in 2024). This version made COHERENT a fully 32 bit operating system
>>>and required at least an Intel 80386 CPU and 1MB of RAM. This version
>>>also brought official support for X Windows and MGR to COHERENT for
>>>the first time. This version was roughly compatible with UNIX SVR3.
>>
>> BTW: Probably "X Window" (the X Window System) is meant above,
>> not "X Windows".
>
>BTDT: it was known as "X Windows", not "X Window".
>
>But officially, it was (and still is) "X" or "The X Window System".
>
>(I've been seeing a lot of folks refer to it as "X Window"
>on Usenet lately -- you kids get off my lawn!)

I thought it was the windows system known as X?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 25 Mar 2024 22:54:04 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

> In article <utsq5g$14tqr$2@dont-email.me>, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:
> >On 25 Mar 2024 06:54:48 GMT, ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote in
> ><X-20240325075426@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>:
> >
> >> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:
> >>>COHERENT version 4 was released in May of 1992 for $100 (around $219
> >>>in 2024). This version made COHERENT a fully 32 bit operating system
> >>>and required at least an Intel 80386 CPU and 1MB of RAM. This version
> >>>also brought official support for X Windows and MGR to COHERENT for
> >>>the first time. This version was roughly compatible with UNIX SVR3.
> >>
> >> BTW: Probably "X Window" (the X Window System) is meant above,
> >> not "X Windows".
> >
> >BTDT: it was known as "X Windows", not "X Window".
> >
> >But officially, it was (and still is) "X" or "The X Window System".
> >
> >(I've been seeing a lot of folks refer to it as "X Window"
> >on Usenet lately -- you kids get off my lawn!)
>
> I thought it was the windows system known as X?

A simple name change, why are you all a-twitter?

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote or quoted:
>BTDT: it was known as "X Windows", not "X Window".
>But officially, it was (and still is) "X" or "The X Window System".

There seem to be two different linguistic points of view here:

Descriptive View

The meaning of a term is determined by how it is used by the people.

Prescriptive View

The manufacturer of a system may determine the terms, and others not.

Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.windows.x

On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:23:58 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:

> ... but the Linux juggernaut got too much for MWC :(

I wonder how you could call a rag-tag bunch of volunteers a
“juggernaut” ...

On 2024-03-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:23:58 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:
>
>> ... but the Linux juggernaut got too much for MWC :(
>
> I wonder how you could call a rag-tag bunch of volunteers a
> “juggernaut” ...

One could argue that Linux ate commercial *nix's lunch. It's
generally the *nix used by big tech including IBM, Google, and on
Chinese "de-Americanized" computers. Not bad for a rag-tag bunch
of volunteers.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
> On 2024-03-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:23:58 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:
>>
>>> ... but the Linux juggernaut got too much for MWC :(
>>
>> I wonder how you could call a rag-tag bunch of volunteers a
>> “juggernaut” ...
>
> One could argue that Linux ate commercial *nix's lunch.

Linux (free of cost) plus the rather rapid performance increases of the
Intel x86 arch over those years were what ate commerical Unix's lunch.
When one could buy a commodity x86 system for a couple grand, which had
more compute performance than a five or six figure unix workstation,
and get 'Unix' (Linux) on the x86 for free, the commerical unix
workstation vendors no longer had a market they could sell into.

One, without the other, would not have had the same devastating effect
on the unix workstation market.

In article <uu2ob8$3bcot$2@dont-email.me>, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>> On 2024-03-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:23:58 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... but the Linux juggernaut got too much for MWC :(
>>>
>>> I wonder how you could call a rag-tag bunch of volunteers a
>>> “juggernaut” ...
>>
>> One could argue that Linux ate commercial *nix's lunch.
>
>Linux (free of cost) plus the rather rapid performance increases of the
>Intel x86 arch over those years were what ate commerical Unix's lunch.
>When one could buy a commodity x86 system for a couple grand, which had
>more compute performance than a five or six figure unix workstation,
>and get 'Unix' (Linux) on the x86 for free, the commerical unix
>workstation vendors no longer had a market they could sell into.
>
>One, without the other, would not have had the same devastating effect
>on the unix workstation market.

I remember vividly back in the mid-late 90's a sysadmin I knew
showing me a COTS PC running Linux; nothing I hadn't seen before
but he made an offhand comment that blew me away: "Yeah, it's
about half the speed of a SPARCstation-whatever, but a quarter
of the cost."

That's when I knew Linux on x86 had won.

- Dan C.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

> The Mark Williams Company
> And the COHERENT operating system
> =================================
> Feb 17, 2024

Thanks for writing. And for posting. I had never heard of COHERENT.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote at 02:15 this Friday (GMT):
> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:
>
>> The Mark Williams Company
>> And the COHERENT operating system
>> =================================
>> Feb 17, 2024
>
> Thanks for writing. And for posting. I had never heard of COHERENT.

Same, me neither.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Thu, 28 Mar 2024 03:31:53 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:

> Linux (free of cost) plus the rather rapid performance increases of the
> Intel x86 arch over those years were what ate commerical Unix's lunch.
> When one could buy a commodity x86 system for a couple grand ...

BSDs could run on those, too. And Sun and other Unix vendors did bring out
machines based on x86 hardware.

So what was different about Linux? It seemed to attract a whole pool of
smart folks with creative new ideas, in a way that no other platform of
the time, open source or not, could match.

In article <uu546b$otu$2@reader1.panix.com>,
Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>In article <uu2ob8$3bcot$2@dont-email.me>, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>>Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>>> On 2024-03-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 12:23:58 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ... but the Linux juggernaut got too much for MWC :(
>>>>
>>>> I wonder how you could call a rag-tag bunch of volunteers a
>>>> “juggernaut” ...
>>>
>>> One could argue that Linux ate commercial *nix's lunch.
>>
>>Linux (free of cost) plus the rather rapid performance increases of the
>>Intel x86 arch over those years were what ate commerical Unix's lunch.
>>When one could buy a commodity x86 system for a couple grand, which had
>>more compute performance than a five or six figure unix workstation,
>>and get 'Unix' (Linux) on the x86 for free, the commerical unix
>>workstation vendors no longer had a market they could sell into.
>>
>>One, without the other, would not have had the same devastating effect
>>on the unix workstation market.
>
>I remember vividly back in the mid-late 90's a sysadmin I knew
>showing me a COTS PC running Linux; nothing I hadn't seen before
>but he made an offhand comment that blew me away: "Yeah, it's
>about half the speed of a SPARCstation-whatever, but a quarter
>of the cost."
>
>That's when I knew Linux on x86 had won.
>
> - Dan C.

I think XFree86 was the final piece of the puzzle. Anyone using
graphical workstations wouldn't want to give up that environment.
Having X11 on x86 gave the same workstation experience at that
much cheaper price point.

On 29 Mar 2024 04:36:24 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:

> I think XFree86 was the final piece of the puzzle.

Keith Packard describes going to X Consortium meetings, when he was part
of that project. None of the big Unix workstation vendors (Sun etc) wanted
to talk to them: at best, they were seen as unwanted competition, at
worst, as irrelevant. Inconsequential little pipsqueaks, I guess.

Ironic that all those Unix workstation vendors are now extinct, and the
Xorg fork (that included Packard) of XFree86 is now basically the only
group left carrying the X11 torch. What’s left of it, anyway, before
Wayland takes over.