Furthermore, with the included Y-cable, Apple II specific peripherals could be used as well: The Apple 5.25, Apple UniDisk 3.5, and an Apple II joystick or paddles. For example, the mouse, keyboard, internal speaker, clock, serial ports (printer, modem, networking), extra RAM (up to 1024 KB), internal 3.5 floppy drive and hard disk all functioned as Apple II devices. When running in Apple II emulation mode, certain Macintosh peripherals and hardware could be 'borrowed' and used as Apple II devices. The Apple IIe Card worked in the Macintosh LC series (I, II, III, III+, 475, 520, 550, 575), as well as the LC-slot compatible Color Classic. Īpple asked the media to call the peripheral the 'Apple IIe option board', as earlier 'emulator' cards were not successful. A similar 'Apple IIGS Card' was planned for running 16-bit Apple IIGS software, but was canceled after being deemed too costly, therefore leaving no migration path for that segment of the Apple II line. Software could even be run directly from an Apple II floppy diskette, the same way as with an Apple IIe (made possible via the card's cable-adapter that connected a standard Apple 5.25 drive). By adding the optional PDS card to low cost Macintosh computers, it provided backwards compatibility with the vast Apple II software library of over 10,000 titles. However, by that period Apple was looking to phase out the Apple II line, and so introduced the Apple IIe Card as a means to transition Apple II educators (and to a smaller degree, home and small business users) by migrating them over to the Macintosh. Well into the 1990s, most schools still had a substantial investment in Apple II computers and software in their classrooms and labs. Released in March 1991 for use with the LC family, Apple targeted the card at its widely dominated educational market to ease the transition from Apple II-based classrooms, with thousands of entrenched educational software titles, to Macintosh-based classrooms. The Apple IIe Card is a hardware emulation board, also referred to as compatibility card, which allows compatible Macintosh computers to run software designed for the Apple II series of computers (with the exception of the II GS). The PDS-based Apple IIe Card, featuring a 65C02 CPU, Gemini (Mega II spinoff), IWM and 256 KB of RAM

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