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Marc B. McDonald is an American who was Microsoft's first salaried employee (not counting Monte Davidoff, who wrote the math package for BASIC for a flat fee).
He is credited with designing and implementing the 8-bit File Allocation Table file system for the NCR 8200[citation needed] data-entry terminal and Microsoft's Standalone Disk BASIC-80 in 1977.
McDonald also developed an 8-bit operating system called M-DOS or MIDAS; the system itself was never released by Microsoft, but its file system (a variant of FAT) influenced Tim Paterson's QDOS.[1][2]
A version of "Standalone Disk Basic" was ported to a Seattle Computer Products 8086 by Bob O'Rear, and Tim Paterson was often at Microsoft to aid in the effort. Tim Paterson copied the key aspects of the FAT system (single table, each directory entry containing the head of the file's cluster list, and the last value indicating the number of sectors used in the last cluster) when he implemented the FAT12 file system for his operating system 86-DOS in 1980, which became the basis for MS-DOS and PC DOS in 1981. He made two mistakes in implementation:
In early versions there was no directory stopper entry. This resulted in reading the entire directory track to discover a file did not exist. On floppies this was a major slowdown.
MS-DOS updates the directory entry and FAT tables in the wrong order when a file is created. By writing the directory first, if the system crashed before the FAT was updated, a dangling reference would be created. This results in a cross-linked file on the next cluster allocation.
McDonald left Microsoft in January 1984, citing a reason that the company had gotten "too big", Microsoft having around four hundred employees at that time. He was Asymetrix's first employee where he worked on a LISP pcode system used internally and redesigned the ToolBook runtime and compiler for ToolBook 3.0. At Design Intelligence, Marc worked on adaptive document design and an expression-based programming language used for layout experiments. He rejoined Microsoft in December 2000 when it bought Design Intelligence.
When McDonald rejoined Microsoft, a number of employees including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to assign him the employee number "1" but found that the human resources software did not allow this. Instead he was given a badge with all the digits scraped off except "1".[3]
McDonald worked in the QA-oriented Windows Defect Prevention group, focusing on organizational best practices to drive software quality from the bottom up. He is co-author of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention published in November 2007.[4] He holds six software patents.
McDonald left Microsoft in September 2011. He was with startup MindMode Corp. through 2012, and has been at PaperG since.[5]
^Cite error: The named reference Duncan_1988_MS-DOS_Encyclopedia was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Manes, Stephen; Andrews, Paul (1993). Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry—and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. Doubleday. p. 157. ISBN 0-385-42075-7. Remembering his conversation at NCC with Marc McDonald about File Allocation Tables in his unfinished, large, and never-released 8-bit MIDAS operating system, Paterson decided that the FAT scheme was a better way to handle disk information than the way CP/M did it.
Marc B. McDonald is an American who was Microsoft's first salaried employee (not counting Monte Davidoff, who wrote the math package for BASIC for a flat...
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(born 1947), Ulster Defence Association brigadier for South Belfast Jon-MarcMcDonald (born 1976), American political activist This disambiguation page lists...
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WTF with Marc Maron is a weekly podcast and radio show hosted by stand-up comedian Marc Maron. The show was launched in September 2009. The show is produced...
DOS), an 8-bit operating system for 8080/Z80, developed by Microsoft's MarcMcDonald in 1979 Myarc Disk Operating System (aka MDOS), an operating system...
Nauka i Zhizn, 1992, issue 3, p. 48. Grannis, Shaun J.; Overhage, J. Marc; McDonald, Clement J. (2002), "Analysis of identifier performance using a deterministic...
initially) was designed and implemented by MarcMcDonald, based on a series of discussions between McDonald and Bill Gates. It was introduced with 8-bit...
the sole drummer. In May 2018, Marc Quiñones joined on percussion. In November 2019, it was announced that Michael McDonald would return for a 50th anniversary...
The adaptation of Microsoft's Extended BASIC-80 was carried out by MarcMcDonald in 1976/1977. MBASIC is available for CP/M-80 and ISIS-II. Also available...
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During the campaign, Babin's campaign manager was 21-year-old Jon-MarcMcDonald. McDonald gained national attention when he simultaneously came out of the...
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New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014. ISBN 978-0-812-98278-7 Maron, Marc and Brendan McDonald. Waiting for the Punch: Words to Live by from the WTF Podcast...
[dead link] "Artist Search for "tara mcdonald"". AllMusic. Retrieved 9 January 2024. "Outta My Head (feat. Tara McDonald) [Club Mix] - Single by Rawdolff...
Marc Alexander Thiessen (born January 13, 1967) is an American conservative author, political appointee, and weekly columnist for The Washington Post....
McDonald was the son of John Francis McDonald and Catherine Ashlue McDonald. He was educated at St. Xavier College in Cincinnati, Ohio. McDonald's started...
King Krule and Powell. McDonald’s production is found across multiple genres and styles, both on and outside of XL. In 2009, McDonald recorded and mixed The...
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circumstances" of McDonald's case.: 2 In May 2013, an article by Marc Lamont Hill for Ebony.com entitled "Why Aren't We Fighting for CeCe McDonald?" won the...
22, 2017 – via YouTube. Maron, Marc (October 17, 2011). "Episode 219 – Norm Macdonald". WTF with Marc Maron Podcast. Marc Maron. Seaton, Paul (December...
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