DayStar Digital

DayStar Digital, Inc. was a company founded in 1983 by Andrew Lewis as a subcontract manufacturer of electronic assemblies and circuit boards. In 1986, the company released memory upgrades for Apple Macintosh (Mac) computers as its first products, and in 1987, DayStar began to market processor upgrades exclusively for the Mac, the first being for the Apple Macintosh II computer. The company focused exclusively on this market for the full range of Mac computers through 1995, utilizing the Motorola 68030, 68040 and PowerPC 601 processors. These upgrades were installed directly into the PDS slot of various Macintosh platforms, as on the Macintosh IIci, or via an adapter. DayStar became known as the leading "speed shop" for Macintosh computer systems; it won virtually every Mac editorial award given for product excellence and had the top rated brand among peripheral manufacturers. The company also formed unique strategic relationships with many companies including Apple, IBM and Adobe. In 1995, DayStar was one of three companies in the world awarded licenses by Apple to “clone” the Macintosh computer.

DayStar Digital, Inc.
TypePrivate
FoundedGeorgia (May, 1983)
DefunctJuly, 1999 [1]
Headquarters
Flowery Branch, Georgia
,
United States
Key people
Andrew F. Lewis, Founder/CEO (see list below)
ProductsTurbo 040, Power 601, Genesis MP
Number of employees
175

High-performance Macintosh clones

In 1995, the company engaged with Apple in co-development of the first dual processor system, sold only as an upgrade by DayStar. Then, in 1995, DayStar received a license from Apple to produce Macintosh clones and the industry's only multi-processor Apple systems,[2] notably the DayStar Genesis MP dual and quad processor systems built around the PowerPC 604 chips. In retrospect, the Genesis MP is considered one of the most influential Macs of 1995, and one of the 25 most influential Macs for the first 25 years of the Mac product line.[3] The license for all clone manufacturers was for version 7 of the operating system, but when Apple did not extend the license to version 8, it effectively canceled the program for all the clone companies. DayStar Digital eventually dissolved as a company in July, 1999.[1]

Key people behind the marketing and technological success of the company include (and in no particular order): Marketing: Gary Dailey, David Methven, Ted Cheney, Jerry DeAvila; Engineering: Bob Hudson, Larry Knight, Irvan Krantzler, Rod Frazer, Henry Kannapel, Chris Cooksey.

References
  1. Georgia Secretary of State corporation registration Archived 2014-05-05 at Archive.today. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  2. Thompson, Tom (February 1997). "A new library and API enable preemptive multitasking and multiprocessing on Mac OS systems". Archived from the original on 7 February 2005. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  3. Knight, Dan (February 17, 2009). "The 25 Most Important Macs". Retrieved 5 May 2014. In 2020, the Genesis MP was recently rated #15 in the top 20 Macs of all time. https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/09/20-macs-for-2020-15-daystar-genesis-mp/
  • Andrew Lewis, personal memoirs, 1993, 2000.
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