Apple II processor cards (or co-processor cards) were special cards that could be used to allow the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

to use different processors on the (otherwise) same

computer hardware Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the computer case, case, central processing unit (CPU), Random-access memory, random access memory (RAM), Computer monitor, monitor, Computer mouse, mouse, Computer keyboard, ...

. This allowed other operating systems to run on the Apple II. Here are some processors that were available on

coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography o ...

cards for the Apple II: *

Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...

– Microsoft

SoftCard JVL Ventures, LLC d/b/a Softcard (formerly Isis Mobile Wallet), was a joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon which produced a mobile payments platform known as ''Softcard'', which used near-field communication (NFC) technology to allo ...

or compatibles, ran

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers an ...

– the AD8088 Processor Card, from

ALF Products ALF Products Inc., or ALF (named after an assembly language instruction for "rotate the A register Left Four bits"), was a Colorado company primarily known for its computer-controlled music synthesizers and floppy disk supplies and duplicators. His ...

, ran

CP/M-86 CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Research als ...

and

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

as well as increased the speed of math functions in

Applesoft BASIC Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original ...

. MetaCard, from Metamorphic Systems (a 1982 startup by

Phil Zimmermann Philip R. Zimmermann (born 1954) is an American computer scientist and Cryptography, cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoI ...

), ran CP/M-86, MS-DOS, and

UCSD Pascal UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (UCS ...

Motorola 6809 The Motorola 6809 ("''sixty-eight-oh-nine''") is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the 6 ...

– The Mill, by Stellation Two, ran

OS-9 OS-9 is a family of real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user operating systems, developed in the 1980s, originally by Microware Systems Corporation for the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. It was purchased by Radisys Corp in 2001, and ...

Level One. AP10 by IBS running

FLEX Flex or FLEX may refer to: Computing * Flex (language), developed by Alan Kay * FLEX (operating system), a single-tasking operating system for the Motorola 6800 * FlexOS, an operating system developed by Digital Research * FLEX (protocol), a comm ...

* Motorola 68008 – mc magazineApple II 68008 Co Processorcard project
/ref> * DEC LSI-11 – (unconfirmed)

References

Processor cards Compatibility cards {{Compu-hardware-stub

See also

References