Mark Zbikowski | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 21, 1956 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Yale University |
| Known for | DOS MZ executable Work at Microsoft |
Mark "Zibo" Joseph Zbikowski (born March 21, 1956) is a former Microsoft Architect and an early computer hacker. He started working at the company only a few years after its inception, leading efforts in MS-DOS, OS/2, Cairo and Windows NT. In 2006, he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the third employee to reach this milestone, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He retired the same year from Microsoft.
He was the designer of the MS-DOS executable file format, and the headers of that file format start with his initials: the ASCII characters 'MZ' (0x4D, 0x5A). [1]
Zbikowski was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1956. While attending The Roeper School (then known as Roeper City And Country School) from 1961 to 1974, he developed an interest in mathematics and computers. His 8th-grade performance in the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition led to an invitation in an NSF-funded summer program at Oakland University where he became friends with Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Jeff Sachs. He later finished second in the MMPC twice in 1972-73 and 1973-74.
Zbikowski pursued computer science at Harvard (A.B. 1978) and at Yale (S.M. 1979). [2] He was active in both universities' Gilbert and Sullivan performing groups. [3]
Ballmer recruited Zbikowski, who joined Microsoft in 1981. In March 1982, he replaced Tim Paterson as development lead and manager for Microsoft's MS-DOS 2.0, a position he held through DOS 4.0. His first major contributions were the addition of hierarchical directory structure to DOS 2.0 and installable device drivers which later led to Plug and Play in Windows. From March 1985 until 1991, he was on the architecture team for OS/2, development manager for file systems and device drivers, and technical advisor to Paul Maritz. The breakthrough concept of Installable File System in OS/2 is attributed to him.
Following the demise of the Microsoft/IBM joint development agreement, he was an architect, development manager and key contributor to Cairo, working for Jim Allchin and, later, Anthony Short. This led to Cairo's Object File System and content index efforts. In 1996, as Cairo migrated from being a standalone product to a technology source, Zbikowski worked under Lou Perazzoli on the Windows NT kernel, focusing on performance and size, before becoming architect and development manager for NT file systems in 1998.
In 2001, Zbikowski was a candidate for director of the Harvard Alumni Association.
Zbikowski retired from Microsoft in June 2006.
Due to his interest in education, he became affiliated, in 2007, with the University of Washington as a lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering department in the College of Engineering.
Zbikowski returned to work at Ivy Softworks and Atlas Informatics (2014-2017) [4] as CTO and then at Valve Corporation (2017-2019), retiring again in December 2019. He presently is Technology Advisor to Polyverse. [5]
Mark Zbikowski is or has been affiliated with the following companies:
The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.
IBM PC DOS, an acronym for IBM Personal Computer Disk Operating System, is a discontinued disk operating system for the IBM Personal Computer, its successors, and IBM PC compatibles. It was manufactured and sold by IBM from the early 1980s into the 2000s. Developed by Microsoft, it was also sold by that company as MS-DOS. Both operating systems were identical or almost identical until 1993, when IBM began selling PC DOS 6.1 with new features. The collective shorthand for PC DOS and MS-DOS was DOS, which is also the generic term for disk operating system, and is shared with dozens of disk operating systems called DOS.
MZ may refer to:
In computer programming, a magic number is any of the following:
Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in subsequent versions. The first version in the 9x series was Windows 95, which was succeeded by Windows 98 and then Windows Me, which was the third and last version of Windows on the 9x line, until the series was superseded by Windows XP.
For Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and DOS, .exe is the filename extension that denotes a file as being executable – a computer program – containing an entry point.
A COM file is a type of simple executable file. On the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX operating systems of the 1970s, .COM was used as a filename extension for text files containing commands to be issued to the operating system. With the introduction of Digital Research's CP/M, the type of files commonly associated with COM extension changed to that of executable files. This convention was later carried over to DOS. Even when complemented by the more general EXE file format for executables, the compact COM files remained viable and frequently used under DOS.
Virtual DOS machines (VDM) refer to a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.
This article details versions of MS-DOS, IBM PC DOS, and at least partially compatible disk operating systems. It does not include the many other operating systems called "DOS" which are unrelated to IBM PC compatibles.
James Edward Allchin is an American computer scientist, philanthropist and guitarist. He is a former Microsoft executive.
Charles Petzold is an American programmer and technical author on Microsoft Windows applications. He is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and was named one of Microsoft's seven Windows Pioneers.
The New Executable is a 16-bit executable file format, a successor to the DOS MZ executable format. It was used in Windows 1.0–3.x, Windows 9x, multitasking MS-DOS 4.0, OS/2 1.x, and the OS/2 subset of Windows NT up to version 5.0. An NE is also called a segmented executable. It utilizes the 286 protected mode.
File Manager is a file manager program bundled with releases of OS/2 and Microsoft Windows between 1988 and 1999 and available from 6 April 2018 as an optional download for all modern releases of Windows, including Windows 10.
A program information file (PIF) defines how a given DOS program should be run in a multi-tasking environment, especially in order to avoid giving it unnecessary resources which could remain available to other programs. TopView was the originator of PIFs; they were then inherited and extended by DESQview and Microsoft Windows, where they are most often seen. PIFs are seldom used today in software due to the absence of DOS applications.
The DOS MZ executable format is the executable file format used for .EXE files in DOS.
In computing, sys is a command used in many operating system command-line shells and also in Microsoft BASIC.
The DOS API is an API which originated with 86-DOS and is used in MS-DOS/PC DOS and other DOS-compatible operating systems. Most calls to the DOS API are invoked using software interrupt 21h. By calling INT 21h with a subfunction number in the AH processor register and other parameters in other registers, various DOS services can be invoked. These include handling keyboard input, video output, disk file access, program execution, memory allocation, and various other activities. In the late 1980s, DOS extenders along with the DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) allow the programs to run in either 16-bit or 32-bit protected mode and still have access to the DOS API.
MS-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 operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS". MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system.
DOS is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible systems from other manufacturers include DR-DOS (1988), ROM-DOS (1989), PTS-DOS (1993), and FreeDOS (1998). MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995.
The development of Windows 95 began around March 1992, just after the release of Windows 3.1. At this time, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows NT 3.1 were still in development at Microsoft. Windows 95 was eventually released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995.
| Authority control databases: Academics |
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