DayStar Digital

DayStar Digital was a Macintosh clone licensee that also produced 3rd-party and licensed upgrades for Macintosh computers.

History
DayStar Digital was founded by Andrew F. Lewis and incorporated in the state of Georgia on January 17, 1984. The company began as an electronics manufacturer and sold upgrades for early Macintosh computers. Daystar Digital also manufactured the Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card for Apple Computer under a licensing agreement that was uncommon at the time. It began producing Macintosh clones in 1996 with the DayStar Genesis series.

After another Apple licensee, Bandai, announced that it would abandon the Pippin platform and close its subsidiary Bandai Digital Entertainment on March 13, 1998, DayStar Digital helped liquidate as many as 2,000 unsold Pippin @WORLD consoles. When Katz Media in Europe went bankrupt in 1998, its remaining inventory of KMP 2000 consoles was sold off to DayStar Digital.

Apple formally ended the Macintosh clone licensing program in 1997 with the release of Mac OS 8. DayStar Digital formally stopped producing Macintosh clones on August 25, 1997 and partnered with MacWorks and GDTS (Gary Dailey Tech Service) to repurpose the remainder of DayStar Genesis parts in inventory as DayStar Millenium workstations. In November 1998, DayStar Digital licensed its technology to GDTS and was dissolved on July 4, 1999. GDTS renamed itself Daystar Technology and later acquired XLR8, another upgrade manufacturer.