Onyx Systems, Inc. was a computer hardware and software company founded in
Cupertino, California
Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose, California, San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ...
in 1979 by Bob Marsh and Kip Myers, former managers in
Zilog
Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors, microcontrollers, and application-specific embedded System on a chip, system-on-chip (SoC) products.
The company was founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann, who were soo ...
's systems group. It was one of the earliest vendors of microprocessor-based
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
systems.Peter H. Salus, "The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin /ref>
Products
The company's first product, the C8000, was a
Zilog
Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors, microcontrollers, and application-specific embedded System on a chip, system-on-chip (SoC) products.
The company was founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann, who were soo ...
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...
OS, with a hard disk, and a tape drive for backups. It included IBM terminal emulation and a
COBOL
COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural, and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...
compiler, with a Z8000-based CPU add-in board to follow.
Later known as the C8001, thus establishing the broader notion of the C8000 series of products, the Z80-based product could be equipped with up to four 64 KB RAM cards for a total of 256 KB. The machine was designed to be upgraded to the subsequent
16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.
A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...
model in the range, the C8002, by adding a Z8000 processor card to supplement the existing Z80 card, and for an additional 256 KB of RAM to be added on its own card. Onyx licensed Unix from
Western Electric
Western Electric Co., Inc. was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company that operated from 1869 to 1996. A subsidiary of the AT&T Corporation for most of its lifespan, Western Electric was the primary manufacturer, supplier, ...
and quoted four-user and eight-user licences costing $1,500 and $2,500 respectively.
In 1980, Onyx introduced the C8002 based on the
Z8000
The Zilog Z8000 is a 16-bit microprocessor architecture designed by Zilog and introduced in early 1979. Two chips were initially released, differing only in the width of the address bus; the Z8001 had a 23-bit bus while the Z8002 had a 16-bit b ...
. Its price of was half the cost of any other computer capable of running Unix, and included
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
' recent
Version 7 Unix
Version 7 Unix, also called Seventh Edition Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. V7, released in 1979, was the last Bell Laboratories release to see widespread distribution before the commerc ...
, this having been adapted for the Z8000 with a "rewritten nucleus and several new compilers", renamed ONIX, but otherwise being "exactly the same system" as the Western Electric product available for the DEC
PDP-11
The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...
family. Instead of electing to use Zilog's own Z8001 product to offer a system with
memory management
Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of Resource management (computing), resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory manag ...
, Onyx instead chose to use the Z8002 in conjunction with its own memory management hardware, thus avoiding the delays experienced by other manufacturers who had chosen to base their designs around the Z8001 and its accompanying memory management chip. Onyx's hardware implemented a 2 KB
page
Page most commonly refers to:
* Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book
Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to:
Roles
* Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation
* Page (servant), traditionally a young m ...
size and allowed the system to access up to 1 MB of memory, although processes were limited to 64 KB - imposed by the limitations of the Z8002 itself - for each of their program and data sections. These limitations were less onerous that those imposed by various 16-bit
minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...
s where the 64 KB limit applied to the combined size of the program and data sections, with the PDP-11/23 noted as an example.
Alongside the Z8002, the C8002 also provided an Am9512
floating-point unit
A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU), colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multip ...
. Mass storage was supported by a dedicated Z80A processor with 64 KB of its own RAM, this hosting the disk and tape control software along with a
disk sector
In computer disk storage, a sector is a subdivision of a track on a magnetic disk or optical disc. For most disks, each sector stores a fixed amount of user-accessible data, traditionally 512 bytes for hard disk drives (HDDs), and 2048 byt ...
cache. Data transfers between the disk system and main memory were performed using
direct memory access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems that allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system computer memory, memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU).
Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed i ...
(DMA). Pricing in the United Kingdom started at around £12,000 (£ adjusted for inflation) for a four-user system with 256 KB of RAM and 10 MB hard drive.
In late 1982, Onyx announced models running Unix System III in the form of the Sundance-16, C5002A and C8002A. Featuring the Z8001 processor running at 6 MHz and 256 KB of RAM, expandable to 512 KB, the Sundance-16 was fitted with a 7 MB, 14 MB or 21 MB hard drive and a
tape drive
A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic-tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability.
...
. Two models of the Sundance-16 were offered with variation in the capabilities of the product's built-in display: the Model 80 supported 80-column text, whereas the Model 132 could be switched between 80-column and 132-column modes and permitted double-height and double-width characters. The C5002A and C8002A also featured the Z8001 but were focused on a
terminal server
A terminal server connects devices with a serial port to a local area network (LAN). Products marketed as terminal servers can be very simple devices that do not offer any security functionality, such as data encryption and user authentication. ...
role, with the former supporting up to five users and the latter up to eleven users, and both being expandable to 1 MB of RAM. The C5002A was offered with the 14 MB or 21 MB hard drive choices also offered for the Sundance-16, whereas the C8002A was supplied with a choice of larger hard drives: 20 MB or 40 MB. Additional drives could be connected: one for the C5002A and three for the C8002A. A 60 MB drive option for the C8002A was also referenced in publicity.
Similar upgrades to Onyx's Z80-based system were also introduced, with the Sundance II being announced in mid-1982 as a multi-user version of the base Sundance model, having 256 KB of RAM instead of the 64 KB of the single-user model. An upgrade between models could be performed. These Z80-based models were offered with a choice of CP/M, MP/M and the
OASIS
In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment
Legacy and fate
Codata Systems Corporation was established by former Onyx Systems employees in 1979, introducing a similar Z8000-based product to that of Onyx Systems, the CTS-200 running
Xenix
Xenix is a discontinued Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation. The first version was released in 1980, and Xenix was the most common Unix variant during the mid- to late-1980s. T ...
, before following up with a product based on the
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...
, the CTS-300, running its own Unix variant, Unisis, developed in conjunction with
UniSoft
UniSoft Corporation is an American software developer established in 1981, originally focused on the development of Unix ports for various computer architectures. Based in Millbrae, California, it now builds standardization and conformance te ...
. Unisis was based on Version 7 Unix, and Codata claimed to have been "the first to offer a
microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...
-based Unix on the M68000" and to have supplied 500 systems by early 1983. Codata later released the Codata 3300 system employing an 8 MHz 68000 and having 320 KB of RAM, upgradeable to 1.5 MB, a 12 MB, 33 MB or 84 MB hard drive, and a floppy drive, priced at £8,900 for the entry-level model in the UK, $9,600 in the US. The system employed the IEEE 796
Multibus
Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.
The Multibus specification was a robust industry standard with a relatively large form factor, allowing ...
standard.
Onyx's first Unix-based system was the first platform for the
Informix
Informix is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) and multi-model database offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Inform ...
relational database
A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970.
A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...
system.
Former
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
Scott McNealy
Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun ...
to manage manufacturing at Onyx. McNealy left Onyx to become a co-founder of
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
."Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems", Center for Management Research, Case Code LDEN039, 200 /ref>
Onyx was acquired by
Corvus Systems
Corvus Systems was a computer technology company that offered, at various points in its history, computer hardware, software, and complete PC systems.
History
''Corvus'' was founded by Michael D'Addio and Mark Hahn in 1979. This San Jose, Si ...
in 1985. Corvus discontinued US sales of the Onyx product lines in early 1986, having reportedly pledged to continue manufacturing for foreign markets, eventually selling off the rights to some of its product lines and, in 1987, exiting the microcomputer business altogether.