The DayStar Genesis MP

Source: OSNews

Article note: That's a bit of Apple history I didn't know. Not only did DayStar develop the patches to let the (creaking mess that was) classic MacOS do multiprocessing of a sort (It's not SMP, it's more like an attached co-processor model), they also developed the processor card that Apple put in the 9500/180 MP.

When Apple announced that it was going to be licensing Mac OS to other PC makers, DayStar essentially bet its business on converting from being a manufacturer of high-end upgrades for Apple-built Macs to being a manufacturer of high-end Mac clones. DayStar’s clone was the Genesis MP, and the MP stood for multiprocessing. It was the very first Mac to combine the work of multiple processors toward a common goal.

The problem: Classic Mac OS wasn’t built for multiple processor cores. The operating system knew about its processor, and it used it, and that was it. But the engineers at DayStar had been working on something novel for its high-end audience.

There was such a wealth of innovation coming out of the clone program that Apple itself simply couldn’t do. As consumers, there’s lessons to be learned from the clone program – artificial limitations do not serve us. They only serve corporations.

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