The M&R Enterprises Sup'R'Terminal was the first

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

peripheral card to enable the display of 80 columns of text on a connected monitor. The Sup'R'Terminal is compatible with slot 03 in the Apple II and II+. As the first card making 80 columns of upper and lower case text displayable on these machines, it is the only card supported by the II+ version of Apple Writer and thus the only way to see on a monitor the true layout of text as it will be printed on a page with this popular early personal computer word processor. The Apple II and II+ had until this time only displayed 40 columns of text per line, half the characters included per line on a standard letter-size printed page at 10 characters per inch. This transition to 80-column display was an early step in bringing the

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

concept to the Apple ecosystem. A variety of clone add-on cards with similar functionality were released in the wake of the Sup'R'Terminal, including the Videx Videoterm. Apple's inclusion of their own card, the

Apple 80-Column Text Card The Apple 80-Column Text Card is an expansion card for the Apple IIe computer to give it the option of displaying 80 columns of text instead of 40 columns. Two models were available; the cheaper 80-column card has just enough extra random-access m ...

, with the Apple IIe nearly eliminated the third party 80-column card market.

Development

The Sup'R'Terminal was designed by John R. Wilbur and the firmware was written by

Andy Hertzfeld Andrew Jay Hertzfeld (born April 6, 1953) is an American software engineer who was a member of Apple Computer's original Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer fr ...

in 1980."Video Compensation Subcircuit," US Patent 4314245, March 10th, 1980.

References

{{reflist Apple II peripherals Graphics cards