Applicard CP/M on Apple ///!

[Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com>]

Not sure how many folks in this community own Apple ///s, but I've made a very 
interesting discovery.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to score an Apple /// Appli-card with 
documentation and system diskettes.  I had seen mention of this board in 
advertising from 1983, but didn't realize it had been shipped as a product! 
The diskettes had grown mold, but with a little TLC I was able to clean and 
read them without errors.

The board itself has hardware problems that I'm still chasing down, but after 
looking it over I realized that it used the same boot EPROM as the A2 
Appli-card and appeared to have essentially the same chip complement (although 
in a different form-factor).  Taking a leap of faith, I plugged my Freed Z80 
card into the A3 (a real A2 Applicard is too long to fit) and booted the 
system disk.

Lo and Behold!  It came right up in CP/M :-).  This is very exciting news in a 
geeky sort of way.  I'm going to release images of the system diskettes and a 
scan of the manual ASAP in case other folks with Apple /// or ///+ systems 
want to try this.  There is driver support for running CP/M from the ProFile 
and I'll be trying that next - but have no reason to think it won't work.

Steve