An electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM) programmer uses an alphanumeric visual display system having a multi character station visual display device for displaying message units made up of a number of characters and the characters are stored as bytes of data in memory cells of an EEPROM forming a part of the display system.
Individual characters within a message in it are selected by selectively generating a character address corresponding to a character display station position in a message unit and the selected character is identified by a cursor appearing in the associated character display station.
A keyboard is provided for entering data representative of a character to be written into memory. The involved EEPROM cells are then conditioned by related means to receive and retain the entered data. The data so written into the EEPROM is displayed on the visual display device in alphanumeric form for immediate and accurate verification.