Diamond Multimedia is an American company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers. They were one of the major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Diamond Multimedia is a subsidiary of Tul Corporation. History The company was founded by Chong Moon Lee and H. H. Huh, who acted as the technical designer. Diamond Multimedia later merged with S3, Incorporated in 1999 after a long-time cooperative business arrangement, when S3 decided to expand their business from producing graphics chipsets to manufacturing retail graphics cards. The move paralleled the 1999 3dfx purchase of STB Systems, which changed 3dfx from a graphics chipset supplier to companies including Diamond, into a vertically-integrated graphics vendor and direct competitor to S3. However, the first major product after the merger, branded as the S3 Savage 2000, was a commercial failure. Growth in the add-on sound card market, also an ongoing Diamond business, was tempered by the 2000 bankruptcy of Aureal Semiconductor and subsequent asset purchase by vertically-integrated Creative Technologies. With these market failures, the new combined Diamond/S3 company decided to change direction and leave the PC addon-board market. SONICblue was formed. Diamond Multimedia resurfaced in 2003 after the brand and assets had been purchased by Best Data. Diamond again built expansion boards. The company was the defendant in a significant copyright case for its Rio digital music player, which the Recording Industry Association of America claimed infringed copyrights; the Ninth Circuit deemed it to be a fair use, however, in RIAA v. Diamond. Graphics cards Speedstar Diamond's earliest line, now defunct, was the SpeedStar series, initially based on the Tseng Labs ET4000AX chipset, and expanded further in additional releases. The SpeedStar line was launched as a series of high-performance ISA graphics cards that excelled in MS-DOS applications up through the early 1990s. However, as Microsoft Windows gained market share and newer graphics products entered the market, it was later relegated to the cheaper, value-oriented products and the SpeedStar branding was expanded to other products. Partial listing of Speedstar-branded models Diamond SpeedStar Tseng Labs ET4000AX ISA - Older model, doesn't support true color Diamond SpeedStar 24 Tseng Labs ET4000AX ISA - Newer model with the same