By Chris Skeldon 
If I told you that in the 1980’s the Microsoft It was a hardware manufacturer for apple, Do you think? Well, I think you better start believing, because it’s true!
Although it was a short period, it was vital for me Apple II computer It was such a famous computer at that time. Check out in the text how this whole story unfolded before the success of Windows.
Z80 SoftCard, the Microsoft card that powers the Apple II computer
Z80 softcard It is the name of the board that was enacted on April 2, 1980, over 43 years ago. This happened even before Microsoft released MS-DOS. This fact was mentioned by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a press event for the launch of Microsoft Surface in 2012. Even more impressive is that the Z80 was designed for the old Apple II computer.
At the time of launch, in the early days of the company, it had just moved its offices from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Bellevue, Washington. according to computer world (Published at the time) October 1980. The idea came from Microsoft founder Paul Allen. The Z80 SoftCard was a card that used the 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor and had a clock speed of 2,041MHz, according to information from Nicole Expresswhich did not have RAM in its structure.
The reason for this partnership was that although the Apple II computer was a very popular computer, it was unable to run many work-oriented programs—and most consumers wanted to use the machine for that purpose—because its processor was not compatible with these programs. The Zilog Z80 was compatible with the software that works Intel 8080 CPUsAnd Allen believes that with this additional board, the Apple II PC will be able to run Microsoft Basic, in addition to the CP / M operating system, opened up more opportunities for Apple Computer to use other software. And it brings users the possibility to use the most famous word processing software of the time on their Apple II computers, which is WordStar – which is said to be the program used by GG Martin, creator of game of thronesEven today.
Allen was able to prove himself right, and at $349 when it was released, the Z80 SoftCard became a bestseller and revenue-generator for Microsoft that year.
Over time, Microsoft added a 16KB RAM card to the Z80 and the latest version has a capacity of 64KB.
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Although Microsoft’s entire endeavor was short-lived – less than 10 years. He served the company in winning and shaping the market at that time, manufacturing products similar to ibm Thus arousing the interest of other companies to follow the path that you have paved. After that, I zeroed in on the software and the rest is history.
source: Adrenaline