Retina Z2 or Picasso 2?

[Ami_GFX]

A Picasso II would be the better card. It has a built in video switcher and better software. Z2 Retinas are kind of interesting anyway and I wouldn't mind putting one in one of my A2000s. And though neither card will display the Toaster control panel, almost everything else should work, either directly or through mode promotion. And since you have an A2000, you can use the mono composite for the Toaster.

And you would need an A4000 tower with 2 video slots for the Picasso IV solution since the Picasso IV needs a video slot for it's scan doubler.

[Ami_GFX]

The Picasso II has a built in monitor switcher and all you have to do is connect a cable from the Amiga's RGB port to the Picasso's video in. If you have a monitor that can sync to both 15.75 and 31 khz--such as a commodore 1950--you will be able to display everything on one monitor.

even with the RTG ability the Video Toaster control panel can not be displayed?  

The Toaster operates on broadcast quality NTSC video and locks the Amiga to it. It also disables the separate horizontal and vertical sync signals and uses the composite sync signal on the Amigas RGB port. This is where the sync strainer comes in. It "strains" the composite sync signal and separates the horizontal and vertical sync signals. It doesn't do any scan doubling so the output is still 15.75khz but with separate horizontal and vertical sync. The sync strainer is also tuned to the AGA chipset and doesn't work that well with ECS Amigas--ie A2000, A3000. RTG cards output output 31khz VGA compatible video which is a very different standard than NTSC. There are various solutions to display the toaster on a VGA monitor but none of them are cheap or easy or widely available. If you want a color Toaster dislplay on your A2000, the cheapest solution is a 520 video adaptor and a NTSC monitor.


The VGA adaptor from AmigaKit is just for native Amiga 31khz modes--dblntsc, dblpal and multisync. It won't make a 15.75khz mode vga compatible.