DisplayWrite

The DisplayWriter was a dedicated word processing machine released by IBM in 1980. The boot program and storage were on 8-inch floppy disks inserted into a dual-drive external unit. Merge-mail templates could be designed, with all fields designated as a01, a02, a03, etc. Elementary arithmetic could be applied to the fields. A refrigerator-sized central storage and management unit was available.

When PCs appeared, DisplayWrite, a DisplayWriter emulator, was sold to run on them. Documents were stored on the usual 5-1/4 inch floppies with an RFT (revisable format text) or DCA (document content architecture) file extension.

See also: word processor