FireCracker
Whew! Some other people are going to have to answer some of those, but let
me take a whack at a few of them.
The Firecracker has only RGB output — very clean RGB output, as far as I
can tell.
You can Interlace your workbench screen and use the Firecracker in Overlay
Mode, but you will have to live with the flicker.
Overlay Mode uses the Firecracker as a genlock — it overlays the Amiga
image on the Firecracker image. The only other mode is two monitor mode,
which shows the Amiga and Firecracker images on 2 seperate monitors.
The Firecracker goes in a Zorro 2 slot, not the video slot.
To quote the Firecracker manual, if you have a board in the video slot,
"the chances of the Firecracker operating properly using the Amiga output
as overlay is almost non existent."
Yes, you have to exit Silver or Imagine and run a special display program
to view a 24 bit or higher-than-Amiga-resolution picture. If you want to
see your image as HAM at an Amiga resolution, you won't have to leave your
program.
I think Rick left a message about displaying images on the Toaster. I know
very little about it — just what I've seen in the articles.
I sympathise with you — this is a tough (and expensive) decision. You may
want to try to get a chance to look at a Toaster and at a Firecracker
before you make your decision. I can certainly testify that the
Firecracker's output is amazing.
-Brian