The Apple 80-Column Text Card was an
expansion card
In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...
for the
Apple IIe
The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-i ...
computer to give it the option of displaying 80 columns of text instead of the usual 40 columns. Two models were available; the cheaper 80-column card had just enough extra
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
...
to double the video memory capacity, and the Extended 80-Column Text Card had an additional 64
kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quanti ...
s of RAM, bringing the computer's total RAM to 128 KB.
VisiCalc
VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a ...
and
Disk II made the Apple II very popular in small businesses, which asked the company for 80-column support, but Apple delayed improving the Apple II because for three years it expected that the unsuccessful
Apple III
The Apple III (styled as apple ///) is a business-oriented personal computer produced by Apple Computer and released in 1980. Running the Apple SOS operating system, it was intended as the successor to the Apple II series, but was largely consi ...
would be the company's business computer.
The cards went in the IIe's "Auxiliary Slot", which existed in addition to the 7 standard
Apple II peripheral slots present on all expandable Apple II series machines. Although in a separate slot, the card was closely associated with slot #3 of the seven standard slots, using some of the