The Microsoft SoftCard for the Apple II: Getting two processors to share memory
5 comments
·November 5, 2025johndoe0815
I wonder if anyone ever used the Z80 Softcard or one of its many clones to run something different than CP/M?
systemswizard
Would be cool if Microsoft would focus on engineering instead of blog posts
ZeroConcerns
Personally, I prefer cool blog posts over "add another Copilot button that does nothing to something that did not require it anyway" or "paper over a perfectly fine API with a newer version that has 60% of the functionality and 120% of the bugs" (which is what Microsoft engineering mostly seems to boil down to these days), but you be you...
johndoe0815
Raymond Chen’s blog posts are one of the best things coming out of Microsoft.
As a Unix person for decades, for me it’s great to see his incredibly experienced and insightful view on software development in general and specifically OS development at Microsoft and to read about his experience with all these nice processor architectures no longer supported by NT.
I remember my dad using the Z80 Softcard to run WordStar, which was astonishingly powerful considering how long ago it was king of word processors. I’d be surprised if some of the control keys hadn’t influenced our editors, although as a Vim user I can’t immediately think of any.