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We had an Apple II+ with the limitations you describe. However, we purchased and installed the 80-column card that provided both 80-columns and lowercase characters, which is what I think the parent comment is suggesting.

I remember adding 16KB or 32KB to get to a total of 48KB of RAM with a card that piggybacked onto the existing chips. Was that the same upgrade that enabled lowercase letters?

I mostly remember that the RAM upgrade changed the gauges in MS Flight Simulator from octagons into rounder circles.

The first computer I ever used was a second-hand Apple ][e my parents brought home one day when I was little. I got started with BASIC on that thing.

I actually didn't realize until I had to use a ][+ at school later that some computers didn't do lower case :)

Interesting... did the ][+ support an add on 80 column card? My hunch is no, but not sure at all

Yeah, it did. Also a Z80 card so you could run CP/M. With CP/M I could run Fortran and C on my ][+, it was a lot easier to get pirated versions of CP/M SW than original Apple Pascal or Fortran.