The Z-80 Softcard was developed my Microsoft in 1980 to turn an Apple computer into a CP/M system. It’s first hardware product, it was based on the Zilog Z-80 and bundled with BASIC. It allowed Apple II computers to run the CP/M operating system and all of the software programs available for it such as VisiCalc, WordStar, and dBase. Attributed to an idea by Paul Allen to port Microsoft’s products to Apple hardware, it was manufactured by California Computing Systems and introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire.
The card was a Zilog Z-80 CPU with some extra chips to link the Apple II’s bus with the chip. It was later renamed the Microsoft Softcard and was the highest selling Microsoft product that year. The Premium Softcard IIe was also developed later for the Apple IIe computer. Several other manufacturers copied Microsoft’s move and released their own Zilog cards for Apple. For a time, this was considered one of the cheapest ways to get 64k CP/M system and was hugely popular until the advent of other operating systems and computers. Microsoft priced it at $349-$399 and sold over 5,000 in three months. They also eventually developed compilers for Fortran and COBOL for the card as well.