Onyx Systems, Inc., founded in Cupertino, California

Cupertino, California

Cupertino is an affluent suburban city in Santa Clara County, California in the U.S., directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 58,302 at the time of the 2010 census. Forbes...

 in 1979 by Bob Marsh and Kip Myers, was one of the earliest vendors of microprocessor-based Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 systems. The company's initial Unix ports targeted the Zilog

Zilog

Zilog, Inc., previously known as ZiLOG , is a manufacturer of 8-bit and 24-bit microcontrollers, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series.-History:...

 Z8000

Zilog Z8000

The Z8000 is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog in 1979. The architecture was designed by Bernard Peuto while the logic and physical implementation was done by Masatoshi Shima, assisted by a small group of people. The Z8000 was not Z80-compatible, and although it saw steady use well into...

 16-bit microprocessor as CPU, with Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

' Unix Version 7.

The company's first product, the C8000, was a Z80-based micro running the CP/M

CP/M

CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...

 OS, with a hard disk, and a tape drive for backups. It included IBM terminal emulation and a COBOL

COBOL

COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....

 compiler, with a Z8000-based CPU add-in board to follow. The Unix-based product was the first platform for the Informix

Informix

IBM Informix is a family of relational database management system developed by IBM. It is positioned as IBM's flagship data server for online transaction processing as well as integrated solutions...

 relational database

Relational database

A relational database is a database that conforms to relational model theory. The software used in a relational database is called a relational database management system . Colloquial use of the term "relational database" may refer to the RDBMS software, or the relational database itself...

 system.

Former Harvard economics professor William Raduchel

William Raduchel

Dr. William J. Raduchel is an independent director, angel investor and strategic advisor. He was formerly a professor of economics at Harvard, and an assistant dean at Harvard and Radcliffe. He has been an executive at Ruckus Network, Sun Microsystems, AOL Time Warner, Xerox Corporation, and...

 recruited Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy is an American business executive. He co-founded computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim.-Biography:...

 to manage manufacturing at Onyx. McNealy left Onyx to become a co-founder of Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

.

Onyx was acquired by Corvus Systems in 1985.