Went back thru all my procedure.... had the GBAPII++.card file in Libs:
Should be in LIBS:Picasso96/
Reboot... now the board shows up Picasso prefs and active buttons and setting boxes are live 
Still can't set a screen mode though....
You need to create some, with Picasso96ModeNG. Select the card, then check the window: There is one field in the top with a box and an upward pointing arrow. This is a "create new item" field. Click on the field, keep the mouse button held down, drag with the mouse a field into the screen mode area below. This gives you a new resolution. In the gadgets below, enter the size of the resolution.
Then, again, you need to create modes. Again, click and hold onto this "box with upwards pointing arrow", drag an item out of it, drag it to the right-hand side "mode" field. There, select with check box the type of mode you want: 16 colors, 256 colors, Hicolor (16 bit) or truecolor (32 bit). The Cirrus you have does not like 24bit color very much due to the size of its data bus, so truecolor+alpha works better.
Then adkust the pixel clock with the slider below. In the buttons even further down, you can test the mode, or adjust the mode to make it fit to the monitor.
When you are done, click on "Save". The tool will the request that you reboot to have this mode activated. Do so.
Now you'll get the new mode in the workbench screen prefs as well.
some modes need to be fiddled with... I understand that. My Dell monitor goes out of range though.
Then you haven't done the fiddling to the very end.
Oh, and is there anything I need to be setting in the Picasso Variable Setter program? It looks useful.
No.
