Toaster update needs
9 messages in this thread
After all these years on the Amiga, during which I have never attempted to
use or even learn much about the Toaster, I have been appointed to work
with one at my church. Their system is woefully outdated! As best I
could tell by a very quick glance at the system, they have
Amiga 2000, not accelerated
OS1.3
Toaster 1.0 (board and software)
10M RAM, I think.
Hard drive, but I don't yet know its size
Broadcast Titler software, which they use all the time.
Probably a bunch of other things I haven't yet seen, because the system
does work and their broadcasts are quite nice.
They broadcast three church services every week, in addition to the other
things they do (haven't yet found out about all those), but the system is
in almost constant use.
Question 1: Will their Toaster and software work under 2.1? I have a
copy of that reserved for me at my dealer's until I can find out.
Question 2: What would be the most cost effective way to update this
system? What would be required (hardware and software) and some
approximation of what it should cost?
Thanks.
I think my Amiga education is about to undergo another steel learning
curve!
—Betty
Betty,
The Toaster 1.0 software is not AmigaDos 2.0 compatable. Toaster 2.0 was
the first that was 2.0 compatable.
Fr advice on updating, if you could get a Toaster 2.0 update (no longer
available), you could update the Toaster, without having to change
anything, and could even go to Amiga DOS 2.1 with no problems.
But what I would recomend, is the following,
Amiga DOS 2.1 upgrade
GVP 68040/33-4 (only 2000 accelerator really around)
about 245 meg HD addon
Toaster 3.1 upgrade
Optionally, I would also recomend a MegaChip 2000, and an additional 4
megs of GVP's 32 bit RAM.
This would move the systems into the 90's with the latest Toaster
version, with a CG I think they will love, and great effects, not to
mention if they want to play around in 3D.
Forrest
Forrest,
Thanks so much. The people at my church (First Baptist in Arlington) have
talked with you, but they don't speak 'Amiga' very well, and I was not
able to learn from them just what was needed, or why. Wish I could have
been there when you talked with them. Maybe next time.
I'd love to see them have the complete setup you recommend, but I fear
that our budget may not cover all that. but we'll be talking with you
about it in the near future. We have good people working that system, and
they turn out nice broadcasts, in spite of their handicaps with this old
software. I only recently became involved with it, else we'd have done
something about it quite a while ago.
Is it true that with Toaster 3.1, they would no longer need the Broadcast
Titler? It is quite a pain to have to reboot the system during the
services in order to change from Toaster to BT, and they haven't found a
way to get out of BT without rebooting. (That is also the earliest
version, I believe.)
Again, thank so much for explaining to me what they need.
—Betty
Betty,
Excuse me for jumping in here. Your question regarding BT
<Is it true that with Toaster 3.1, they would no longer need the Broadcast
Titler?>
I would say that although Toaster 3.1's CG is a tremendous improvement over the
previous CG version, it would NEVER replace BT. I have a full blown Toaster
edit suite and still use BT every day. BT's line transitions and page effects
alone are worth the price of the package, the fonts are still some of the best
around but cannot be scaled to large sizes as the new Toaster CG. I have BT
installed on another Amiga and pass the Toaster's program output thru the
genlock of that other Amiga so that re-booting is not an issue. With the low
cost of Amiga's (a used 1000 w/genlock is about $400, a 2000 w/genlock about
$600) I would suggest that perhaps you might want to investigate adding another
Amiga to your system., If you should decide to opperate your system in this
way, I would also suggest a passive video routing switch in order to bypass the
other Amiga when not needed. This will retain more of the original signal
quality. Of course, you could spend more money on a high quality genlock for
the second Amiga, this would keep the signal loss to an absolute minimum.
Frank
Frank,
Thanks. That sounds like a wonderful idea. I still have my 1000, and
would be happy to make it available to the church. Then, we'd just need
to locate the genlock. I'll pass this along to the video committee and
see what they think. I thought there just HAD to be a better way.
Betty
—Betty
most likely after they start using the new Toaster CG, BTII will become a
thing of the past for them.
Forrest
That sounds good to me, Forrest. I'm eager to get on with the update.
Will be pushing them!
—Betty
Betty,
To amplify what Forrest said, the DKB MegaChip is pretty much a must on
later Toaster revisions. The HD needs to be 100 meg or better to load
3.0, 40 meg or better to load Toaster 2.0. BT will still be useable but
will look a little better if you are running it through the Toaster gen
lock. The Toaster CG in 3.0 OTOH, might make you decide to either drop BT
or try to move up to Montage.
Memory wise, for 2.0 Software, 2 meg chip and minimum of 8 meg fast. You
should get at least a 68030 acc (040 if you plan much animation). The GVP
030 combo's are fairly cheap used (under $500) and can hod 16 meg 32bit
Ram, pretty much a must for 3.1 operation. .5 gig HD's are pretty
reasonable too.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Thanks for the additional information, Wayne. I do hope we can find room
in the budget for all this! We have a big church, and lots of income, but
it has to be spread out to cover a LOT of activities, all VERY important.
—Betty