Re: A question about 80 columns card

[Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com>]

Michael Black wrote:
> The IIe "80 column card" is just a bit of memory.  It plugs into
> a special slot in the computer.  The IIe has the rest of the circuitry
> for 80 columns, and when the extra memory is added, there is enough
> room for the 80 column screen, and it all works.
>
> I can't remember, or the articles at the time never said, why they
> didn't just put the extra memory on the motherboard.

mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) writes:
> The only apparent motivation was additional profit from selling
> the 80-column capability for a lot more than the cost of memory.

Remember that you could buy just the 80-column text card, which only
had a few Kbytes of memory, or the extended 80-column card, which
expanded the IIe to 128K of RAM.  At the time the IIe was introduced,
the cost of the 64 Kbytes of RAM for the extended card was not so
completely trivial that Apple wanted to include it on the motherboard.
By putting it on a separate card, it allowed customers three choices:

    1)  64K IIe with no 80-column support
    2)  64K IIe with 80-column - only slightly more expensive
    3)  128K IIe - more expensive yet

In my experience, many educational institutions purchased only the
80-column text card, although typically they were later upgraded as
more software started to require 128K.