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Re: MS SoftCard = most popular CP/M platform?
On Sat, 7 May 2011, N.N. Thayer wrote:
http://www.voteview.com/gates.htm
"It ran CP/M on the Apple and was a highly successful product for a
time. Indeed, the SoftCard was the single most popular platform to run
CP/M!"
An add-on for the Apple II ended up being a more popular CP/M platform
than any of the systems that ran it natively?
I don't know, but I can see it as possible.
The first wave of CP/M machines were really expensive, and fairly big.
They either went to the hardcore willing to spend money on toys, or
businesses that could justify the cost.
Then later iterations put them into a more compact package, such as the
Big Board, but by then there were other possibilities, and soon the IBM PC
came along to change things. It seemed like a long time at the time, but
it's only about six years between the Altair 8800 appearing and the IBM PC
arriving.
If you had an early 8080 or Z80 machine, you'd seek out CP/M if you had
floppy drives because it provided a wide base of users ('wide" being
relative, it was small compared to what came later). When the all in ones
hit, dividing the market, there was an influx of users which meant each of
the all in ones had considerable user base. CP/M was less appealing if
you had a computer that sold really well, apart from the fact that the
computer might not use the 8080 or Z80 to run CP/M.
The Apple II helped to split things away from CP/M. Once Visicalc came
along, that helped sell it to a lot of people who hadn't considered
computers before, so they say. Very few of the CP/M machines were in the
age of computers as household items, the Apple wsa part of that second
wave.
The Apple II sold really well.
The ability to run CP/M was likely a selling point to some (they needed
CP/M, but appreciated the smaller size and lower cost of the Apple, and
maybe that it could be just an Apple II was a bonus), while others grabbed
the card because they could. and a third group wanted the Apple II but
kind of liked being able to run CP/M.
Once the clone industry started up, you could get a Z80 card pretty cheap.
It seemed pretty standard to find such a card in an Apple II. So that
helped boost things tremendously.
Michael