Engineering:Sup'R'Terminal

From HandWiki

The M&R Enterprises Sup'R'Terminal was the first Apple II peripheral card to enable the display of 80 columns of text on a connected monitor.[1][2] 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.[3] 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 Videoterm. Apple's inclusion of their own first party clone of the Sup'R'Terminal, the Apple 80-Column Text Card, with the Apple IIe nearly eliminated the third party market 80-column card market.[1] The Sup'R'Terminal was designed by John R. Wilbur and the firmware was written by Andy Hertzfeld in 1980.[4][5]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Weyhrich, Steven. "13 - Apple II Peripherals". Apple II History. http://apple2history.org/history/ah13/#05. Retrieved January 7, 2014. 
  2. "Robot War". The Digital Antiquarian. January 30, 2012. http://www.filfre.net/2012/01/30/. Retrieved January 7, 2014. 
  3. "A2 Peripheral Cards". AppleII.info. http://apple2.info/wiki/index.php?title=A2_Peripheral_Cards#.5D.5B.2B_type_80_Column_Text_Card. Retrieved January 7, 2014. 
  4. M&R Enterprises, Sup'R'Terminal Manual, page 47, 1980.
  5. "Video Compensation Subcircuit," US Patent 4314245, March 10th, 1980.