Sup'R'Terminal

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. Weyhrich, Steven. "13 - Apple II Peripherals". Apple II History. Retrieved January 7, 2014.
  2. "Robot War". The Digital Antiquarian. January 30, 2012. Retrieved January 7, 2014.
  3. "A2 Peripheral Cards". AppleII.info. 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.
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