The company's first product, the C8000, was a
Zilog Z80-based micro running the
CP/M OS, with a hard disk, and a tape drive for backups. It included IBM terminal emulation and a
COBOL 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 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 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. Its price of was half the cost of any other computer capable of running Unix, and included
Bell Labs' recent
Version 7 Unix, 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 family. Instead of electing to use Zilog's own Z8001 product to offer a system with
memory management, 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 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
minicomputers 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. 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. 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 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. These Z80-based models were offered with a choice of CP/M, MP/M and the
OASIS operating system. == Legacy and fate ==