DayStar Digital

DayStar Digital, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	Georgia (May, 1983)
Headquarters	Flowery Branch, Georgia, United States
Key people	Andrew F. Lewis Gary Dailey Jack Kolk Steve Simpson
Products	Turbo 040, Power 601, Genesis MP
Employees	125

DayStar Digital, Inc., was 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 Computers, its first product. In 1987 the company began to market processor upgrades exclusively for the Mac, the first one 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 installed in various Macintosh platforms either in the PDS slot directly, as on the Macintosh IIci, or via an adapter. DayStar became known as the leading "speed shop" for Macintosh computer systems. DayStar 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.

High-performance Macintosh clones

In 1995 the company engaged with Apple a co-development of the first dual processor system, sold only as an upgrade by DayStar. Then, in 1995, DayStar received a clone license from Apple Macintosh clones to produce the industry's only multi-processor Apple systems as reported in BYTE Magazine, notably the DayStar Genesis MP dual and quad processor systems built around the PowerPC 604 chips. The license for all clone manufacturers was for version 7 of the operating system. When Apple did not extend the license to version 8, it effectively canceled the program for all the clone companies. Daystar Technologies was formed at this time to continue support and service of the company's clone products.

References

• Andrew F. Lewis, personal memoirs, 1993, 2000.
• Gary Dailey