Apple IIe: what cards to choose

Hi,

A little while back I purchased the amazing ESP32 card for the Apple II, and would love to finally get my Apple IIe working well around this. I don't have any working disk drives so previously used a floppy emu on it, however have a BOOTI card in it now.

These are the cards that are in it, some appear doubled up - what would you recommend I keep?

BOOTI card
Disk II interface card (think I need this for the BOOTI, is that right?)
Apple II mouse card
RAMWORKS 1 card, with 1MB installed in AUX slot
Apple Memory Expansion Card aka "Slinky", with 1MB installed - with a lovely curve to the PCB
Apple Super Serial card
Applied Engineering Serial Pro (the clock battery was removed years ago)

Thanks

JB

Probably both Ram cards are overkill, the mouse card, well, don’t use it too much myself.

Both serial cards, I will keep the SSC only.

I have all of those cards but I don’t keep a permanent set of cards in a IIe. However some cards are always installed, a Ramworks, mouse card, 5.25” interface and a hard drive interface. I haven’t used a serial card in likely 25 years. I don’t see much value in a slinky card if you have a Ramworks. Decide what your personal needs are and go for it.

Thanks all, it’ll be used for general use and show offs with the ESP32 card installed. Wouldn’t mind trying to print from an ImageWriter using Print Shop, so will keep the single Apple Serial card and Slinky card there is enough room for it to stay.

The AE serial card does a bit more however don’t need two.

When I had a IIe, I had a Super Serial Card, a floppy interface card to drive a DuoDisk or two UniDisks, and a mouse card. It was a pretty good combination for general use, although like bibilit, I didn't really find I was using the mouse much at all (although Dazzle Draw is a GREAT paint program if you do have a mouse on your Apple II).

I think i just used the mouse once or twice, my main goal was to have a try at Mouse Desk, but in the end didn't liked it too much

In my opinion MouseDesk/Apple Desktop is only usable on a IIc Plus or IIGS. The older machines are just too slow.

Not really, fairly usable in any IIe if we are talking about speed.

I actually think a mouse card is pretty useful -

My roster of cards in my IIe are (this if from memory):

Super Serial Card: For ImageWriter II
Serial Pro: For RTC and Serial to Ethernet for BBSing (using ProTerm 3 which has pretty good mouse support)
FastChip IIe: Fairly inexpensive but quite quick accelerator
Mouse card
Liron Reborn card (for FujiNet / FDD)
Microdrive Turbo (CF based hard disk card)

I have an Uthernet II installed in my IIe as well, but it's not as useful there as it is in my IIgs. It does support Telnet from A2OSx though, but ProTerm is still the best experience for BBSing.

As for the mouse, I have my IIe boot into A2Desktop now (updated MouseDesk) as it is a great, very complete shell. With my FastChip IIe and MDT, by the time my CRT has heated up, I'm at the Desktop. It makes file management a breeze. As noted, ProTerm has good mouse support. And if you want to try using the IIe for, say a Christmas newsletter, PublishIt 3 is pretty incredible for a page layout program that runs on an 8 bit micro.

I also have the 8MB RAM card from Garrett's Workshop.

My first computer was a IIe clone but then in late 1990 I finally moved to the Mac after wanting one for years and stuck with the Mac for years. My vintage collection started off as mostly Macs - I have since added a number of Apple IIs and find that while I like repairing the Macs more (well, that's because they need repairing, recapping etc.) I actually USE my Apple IIs (IIe and especially the IIgs) more, which is generally for BBSing.

Coming from a Mac world, the mouse card is useful to me in an Apple II it'll stay.

If you are running an Apple composite CRT and don't mind modern enhancements like these, I'd thoroughly recommend the ESP32 card. Coming up is reportedly an Apple II emulator which runs 4X the original speed. Seeing various console games run smooth off the CRT (and sound over the tinny speaker) is great to see. I'm hoping a Commodore 64 emulator is on the cards in future. The developer makes frequent firmware updates to the card.