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

Motorola

Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...

 68030, 68040 and PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 601 processors. These upgrades installed in various Macintosh platforms either in the PDS

Processor Direct Slot

Processor Direct Slot or PDS introduced by Apple Computer, in several of their Macintosh models, provided a limited measure of hardware expandibility, without going to the expense of providing full-fledged bus expansion slots.Typically, a machine would feature multiple bus expansions slots, if any...

 slot directly, as on the Macintosh IIci

Macintosh IIci

The Apple Macintosh IIci was an improvement on the Macintosh IIcx. Sharing the same compact case design with three expansion slots, the IIci improved upon the IIcx's 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips. The IIci came with either a 40 or...

, 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

Mac OS nanokernel

Before Mac OS X, PowerPC versions of the Mac OS were based on a nanokernel, or extremely simple operating system kernel. The initial revision of this software is an extremely simple, single tasking system which delegates most tasks to an emulator running the Motorola 68K version of the operating...

 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

Daystar Technologies

Daystar Technologies, Inc., dba Daystar Technology was incorporated in October 1998. The company operates out of Buford, Georgia. Daystar Technology is an Apple Authorized Reseller and Apple Service Provider. The company also manufactures and resells XLR8 brand Apple CPU Upgrades and USB Video...

was formed at this time to continue support and service of the company's clone products.