
DayStar Genesis MP - rbanffy
https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/09/20-macs-for-2020-15-daystar-genesis-mp/
======
BadThink6655321
Ah, memories. I wrote a proposed multiprocessing extension for Genesis, et.
al. which Apple didn’t adopt. Instead they went in different direction for the
multiprocessing library.

David Sowell was an extremely smart engineer who did some incredible work.

DayStar had some great people and those were fun times.

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nkrumm
I remember seeing an ad for the 4x200 mhz system on the back page of a MacMall
catalog and nearly falling off my chair. At the time we had a LCII, with 25
MHz and a maxed out 8mb ram. The thought of a __eight hundred __MHz was
incredibly astounding— few things ha e matched that level of astonishment
since.

~~~
scarface74
The LCII had 2MB on the motherboard and could take 2x4MB sticks but could only
address 10MB. It was also 16Mhz on a slow 16 bit bus.

The LCIII had a 25Mhz processor and a 32 bit bus.

~~~
nkrumm
Ah you are right. It was still great :)

~~~
scarface74
Yeah. I had a fully decked out one with 10MB of RAM, 80MB hard drive, an Apple
//e card, a 5-1/4 inch drive and a LaserWriter LS.

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lproven
I always wished that XPostFacto, the tool for installing early versions of Mac
OS X on unsupported Macs, supported the Daystars.

[https://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cf...](https://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto3.html)

Early versions ran on some 604E machines. I ran it on a 7600, which later got
a G3 card.

A quad-processor 604E with 10.2 "Jagwyre" would have been cool AF.

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devNoise
The problem with mac clones in the 90s was that it didn't increase mac market
share. Compounding that issue was the fact that the clone makers were making
models like this that were taking sales away from the higher end macs at the
time.

~~~
acomjean
That’s the popular narrative (I think Steve Jobs said that when he pulled all
the clone licenses). The clone makers thought they were taking away Apple
sales , but were expanding the Mac market.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing_Corporation)

As a Mac purchaser in the 90s (actually a clone, a power computing model) the
10% or so savings off real Apple hardware made a difference. macs /clones
weren’t cheap, but having some other manufacturers at least make them made it
seem like Apple was more viable and you were getting decent value for your
money.

Of course having motorola making clones and the CPUs made for weirdness, as
well as the company writing the os for clones making competing hardware. Apple
wasn’t doing well and I think they were trying anything to survive.

Steve Jobs sent a Rolodex card and welcomed power computing users (Like me) to
Apple when they pulled the plug.

[https://www.macworld.com/article/2998000/clone-wars-when-
the...](https://www.macworld.com/article/2998000/clone-wars-when-the-licensed-
copies-were-better-than-apples-own-macs.amp.html)

And Wikipedia has more:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Licensed_Mac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Licensed_Macintosh_clones)

~~~
rbanffy
Apple is (and has always been, really) a systems company. They sell hardware
that may or may not run other system software, but they sell it as a bundle.
Interestingly enough, Jobs' move ending licensing of MacOS to third parties is
a lesson learned by IBM a couple years earlier, not with their PC, but with
their mainframes. Their mainframe OS is licensed in terms similar to Apple's
macOS: it can't run on non-IBM hardware. IBM did this at the point they
realized others, such as Amdahl, could build mainframes that ran IBM software
faster and cheaper than IBM hardware. IBM would be giving up a sizable portion
of their profits if they allowed that and thus they didn't. The last ancestor
of z/OS you can run on non-IBM hardware is MVS 3.8j.

Controlling both hardware and software roadmaps allows IBM to use one as a
force-multiplier for the other.

The death of the mainframe has been predicted since the 80's and doesn't seem
to be any nearer now than it was then.

It'd be fair to point out that Jobs could have learned this lesson without
IBM's help - as NeXT was failing, it wound down its hardware business to sell
its OS and other software to run on other hardware and operating systems. At
that point, it couldn't innovate like they did with their workstation with MO
storage (which was a bad idea) or the built-in DSP (which was a good one).
They would have to differentiate on software alone, something that's much,
much more difficult to do.

~~~
jasomill
As far as I know, all z/OS ancestors were capable of running on non-IBM
systems, and so was z/OS itself until it stopped supporting the 31-bit ESA/390
architecture which was the last IBM mainframe architecture successfully cloned
by any of the plug-compatible manufacturers.

MVS 3.8j was, however, the last version of MVS that was both available from
IBM _without a license_ and which lacked copyright protection under which IBM
could prohibit unrestricted use.

And, to be perfectly pedantic, a number of z/Architecture "clones" now exist
in the form of software emulators — including at least one[1] developed and
sold by IBM itself — and these are perfectly capable of running more recent
z/OS releases, possible license complications notwithstanding.

[1] [https://www.ibm.com/products/z-development-test-
environment](https://www.ibm.com/products/z-development-test-environment)

~~~
rbanffy
True. If you start today, you are limited to 3.8j, because IBM won't license
z/OS to you. If you already have a license, you can continue using your
software on non-IBM hardware, but I think IBM explicitly limits your ability
to run z/OS the same way Apple does macOS.

As for the ZDTE, we can call it "virtual IBM hardware" ;-)

