Apple II Orange Micro entered the market for third-party Apple hardware developing peripherals for the
Apple II. Notably, the company developed the famed Grappler+ card, providing easy way to print Graphics on old
dot matrix printers, and later a
parallel port adapter for the
Apple IIc. It also developed memory extensions cards for the
Apple IIGS.
IBM PC compatibility In the early 1990s, Orange Micro introduced what were described as "
DOS compatibility cards". This was a concept first introduced in the
Mac286 by
AST Research, for which Orange Micro had purchased the rights. These cards essentially consisted of an entire PC on
NuBus or
PCI cards. They contained enough
hardware in order to run PC software such as
MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows at native hardware speeds: notably, an
Intel-compatible CPU,
RAM,
sound cards, and video chipsets supporting
CGA or
VGA. Some hardware, such as
disks,
printers,
modems and
network interface cards, were
emulated in
software. While Orange Micro sold their compatibility card under the
Mac286 name for a time, later offerings were based on the
80386,
80486, and
Pentium lines. Additional cards offered support for
AMD,
Cyrix, and
IDT processors, offering a lower cost. An example of such a PC compatibility card was the OrangePC Model 220. This card, for
NuBus-based Macintoshes, included a 66 MHz
486DX2 and 8MB of preinstalled memory. In December 1995, its retail price was US$1127. A later model, the OrangePC 620 series, offered a 200 or 233 MHz processor. In 1998, it started at US$399, significantly less than previous incarnations. Various 620 models utilized processors from
Intel,
AMD, and IDT. High-end models included a
Sound Blaster chipset, while more affordable options provided software
emulation, with the caveat that sound could not be played in
MS-DOS software. One of its last PC compatibility offerings was the OrangePC 660, introduced in late 1998, supporting a Socket 7 CPU from 100 MHz
Pentium up to a 400 MHz K6-III processor,
NVIDIA RIVA 128 chipset, and two DIMM slots for up to 256MB of
SDRAM. The PCfx!, introduced in late 1998, was a simplified OrangePC 660. The PCfx! includes a soldered-on 200 MHz
Pentium processor, NVIDIA RIVA 128 chipset, and only 1 DIMM slot for up to 128MB of SDRAM, the PCfx! was marketed as a way for Macintosh users to play PC games. The need for such specialized compatibility hardware was eliminated after the
Mac transition to Intel processors, particularly after the release of
Boot Camp and
virtualization software such as
Parallels Desktop for Mac and
VMware Fusion.
Competition Competitors to the Orange Micro compatibility solutions at the time of its heyday included
SoftPC or
SoftWindows, a
software based solution. Since SoftPC was an
emulator, it was much slower than the Orange Micro offerings, which used real PC hardware.
hubs,
webcams, and
digital cameras, such as the
iBot. ==References==