A
compatibility card is an
expansion card for computers that allows it to have
hardware emulation with another device. The most popular of these were for
Macintosh systems that allowed them to emulate
Windows PCs via
NuBus or
PCI.
Apple Computer made many of these cards (including a compatibility card for the
Apple IIe. Later,
Orange Micro made them, but by the end of the 1990s, greater application availability and the lack of expansion slots on the
iMac made such cards obsolete. Besides PC compatibility cards, others existed, such as the
3DO Blaster for PCs.