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

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 ...

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 Apple Writer is a word processor for the Apple II family of personal computers. It was created by Paul Lutus and published in 1979 by Apple Computer. History Apple Writer 1.0 Paul Lutus wrote Apple Writer alone in a small cottage he built ...

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 A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

. 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 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 Videx, Inc. is a Corvallis, Oregon manufacturer of computer hardware such as access control products and data collection terminals. Its initial success came with the first release of the $345 Videoterm (80 column) display card in March 19 ...

Videoterm. Apple's inclusion of their own card, the

Apple 80-Column Text Card The Apple 80-Column Text Card was an expansion card for the Apple IIe 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 t ...

, with the Apple IIe nearly eliminated the third party market 80-column card market. 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 and innovator who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple ...

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

References

{{reflist Apple II peripherals Graphics cards