manuals for the products they planned to introduce. Felsenstein was still working on the terminal as well, and in July, Marsh offered to pay him to develop the video portion. This was essentially a version of the terminal where the data would be supplied by the main memory of the Altair rather than a serial port. The result was the VDM-1, the first graphics card. The VDM-1 could display 16 lines of 64 characters per line, and included the complete ASCII character set with upper- and lower-case characters and a number of graphics characters like arrows and basic math symbols. An Altair equipped with a VDM-1 for output and Processor Technology's 3P+S card running a keyboard for input removed the need for a terminal, yet cost less than dedicated smart terminal products like the Hazeltine. Intelligent terminal concept Before the VDM-1 was launched in late 1975, the only way to program the Altair was through its front-panel switches and LED lamps, or by purchasing a serial card and using a terminal of some sort. This was typically a Model 33, which still cost $1,500 if available. Normally the teletypes were not available Teletype Corporation typically sold them only to large commercial customers, which led to a thriving market for broken-down machines that could be repaired and sold into the microcomputer market. Ed Roberts, who had developed the Altair, eventually arranged a deal with Teletype to supply refurbished Model 33s to MITS customers who had bought an Altair. Les Solomon, whose Popular Electronics magazine launched the Altair, felt a low-cost smart terminal would be highly desirable in the rapidly expanding microcomputer market. In December 1975, Solomon traveled to Phoenix to meet with Don Lancaster to ask about using his TV Typewriter as a video display in a terminal. Lancaster seemed interested, so Solomon took him to Albuquerque to meet Roberts. The two immediately began arguing when Lancaster criticized the design of the Altair and suggested changes to better support expansion cards, demands that Roberts flatly refused. Any hopes of a partnership disappeared. Solomon then traveled to California and approached Marsh with the same idea, stating that if they could produce the design within 30 days, he would put it on the cover of the magazine. Marsh once again hired Felsenstein to design the system. As Felsenstein later noted: Design effort Felsenstein initially wanted to build a terminal following the model of