Briel has described how his first prototype was developed on a (solderless) breadboards, with confirmation of success being the detection of bits corresponding to an "\" character on the output of the Peripheral Interface Adapter chip.

[5][b] The final prototype used a printed circuit board, and had the addition of a circuitry that implemented a 40x24 character output as per the Apple I.

[10] As well as the Woz[d] monitor, the Replica 1 included (integer) Apple I BASIC in ROM to allow quick and easy programming.

[8][e] The Second Edition (SE) was introduced in 2006, the redesign bringing several connectors to the board and sacrificing the breadboard area for the associated circuitry.

[12] The video output could prove problematic with this version especially on some equipment with the issues likely worse on European 60 Hz based display systems.

[12] KRUSADER was developed by Ken Wessen, who described its programming environment as including a simple shell, editor, disassembler and a low-level debugger all fitting within a space of under 4096 bytes.

[13] The Third Edition (TE) was introduced in 2008 and replaced the ATMega circuits with a Parallax Propeller chip to control the video output and keyboard input, the resultant space saving meaning a prototyping breadboard area could be re-introduced to the design.

The Third Edition model removed the USB interface and replaced the AVR microcontroller used to generate video with a Parallax Propeller chip.

[citation needed] Briel's announcement for the Replica 1 Plus version in May 2014 claimed it allowed for a direct connection to the USB port on a computer for power and programming, and it had two firmware ROMs allowing selection of either Apple 1 Basic or Woz monitor and Applesoft lite.

[15] On 1 March 2018 ReActiveMicro announced they had formed a partnership with Briel and henceforth would be selling and supporting Replica 1 plus.