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 slo ...

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-in ...

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 Quantiti ...

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 hob ...

and

Disk II The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ] '', is a -inch floppy disk drive designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 () including the Di ...

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 hardware and firmware functions that would have otherwise been allocated to slot 3, because third-party 80-column cards such as the Sup'R'Terminal had traditionally been placed in slot 3 on the earlier

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

and

Apple II Plus The Apple II Plus (stylized as Apple ] or apple plus) is the second model of the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. It was sold from June 1979 to December 1982. Approximately 380,000 II Pluses were sold during it ...

machines. Therefore the user could enter 80-column mode by issuing the command PR#3 or IN#3 in the BASIC prompt. The "extended" version of the card features a Jumper (computing), jumper block (J1) that when installed enabled the double high-resolution capability. Since early "Revision A" Apple IIe motherboards were incapable of supporting the

bank switching Bank switching is a technique used in computer design to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor instructions. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example ...

needed for the enhanced graphics mode, the block needed to be removed to disable the feature. As with many Apple II products, third party cards were also produced that performed a similar function, and some types of 80-column cards were available for the older

and

, which did not feature a dedicated slot for this card. Soon after the release of the Apple IIe, 80-column text support became a basic requirement of many software packages. Later, 128 KB (and therefore the Extended card) became a minimum requirement for major programs. All versions of the extremely popular

AppleWorks AppleWorks was an integrated office suite containing a word processor, database, and spreadsheet. It was developed by Rupert Lissner for Apple Computer, originally for the Apple II platform and launched in 1984, and was later reworked for the Ma ...

required 128 KB of memory. In the later years of the Apple IIe, the Extended 80-column card was standard on all new machines. The

Apple IIc The Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, is Apple Computer's first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The result was a notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could be transported from place to pl ...

and

Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST ...

, both released after the Apple IIe, also came standard with at least 128 KB of RAM, the extra 64 KB of which could be accessed in the same manner as an Extended 80-column card.

References

{{Apple hardware 80-Column Text Card Memory expansion Graphics cards

See also

References