We talked about the Z80 SoftCard, Microsoft’s first hardware product, back in 2023, but thanks to Raymond Chen and Nicole Branagan, we’ve got some more insights.
The Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard was a plug-in expansion card for the Apple II that added the ability to run CP/M software. According to Wikipedia, it was Microsoft’s first hardware product and in 1980 was the single largest revenue source for the company.
↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing
And Chen links to an article by Branagan from 2020, which goes into even more detail.
So there I was, very happy with my Apple ][plus. But then I saw someone on the internet post, and it seems that my Apple is an overpriced box with a toy microcontroller for a CPU, while real computers use an Intel 8080, 8085 or Zilog Z80 to run something called “CP/M”… but I’ve already spent so much money on the Apple, so can I turn it into a real computer?
↫ Nicole Branagan
I have a soft spot for this particular subgenre of hardware – add-in cards that allow you to run an entirely different architecture inside your computer – and soon, I’ll be diving into a particularly capable example here on OSNews.
