Help me toast some video! (Patreon)

This isn't a patron-exclusive thing, but I've made some progress on a long-delayed project and I thought you might want to hear about it - and maybe someone out there will be able to help me move forward on it, since there's hardware I absolutely need before I can proceed, and it's impossible to find without networking.

First, even if you don't wanna read this post (fair,) here's a link to a non-exclusive, but still hopefully fun article on my website cataloguing everything I think I've learned about NewTek's Video Toaster product line:

https://gekk.info/articles/toaster.html

So, about that: I have a NewTek Video Toaster, an incredibly well known piece of video processing gear. It's been sitting in the studio for a year, inside a perfectly functional Amiga, and I haven't done anything with it because I'm not sure how to approach the subject.

I really don't feel like the right person to make... an instructional VHS, basically. Because that's what it would be if I made a video "about" the Toaster: an hour and a half of me going "and if we click here, we get a wipe. If we click here, we can save a still in a framebuffer..." That's, ah, really not me.

I don't have a story for the Toaster. I have no personal connection to it, and frankly what it does is... pretty straightforward, if you understand the role it was made to serve. There's only five minutes of explanation to be had, unless I just use it to explain general video production concepts, and if I'm doing that, I'd much rather demo with more conventional equipment (a separate project I tried to get started on two years ago, and am still struggling with.)

I have no deep technical understanding of the Toaster either, so I don't think I'd be the right person to try to explain how it works. Almost all my opinions on it are also about what other people think of it, since it's been such a meme for decades, and honestly I shouldn't even explain my unjustifiable knee-jerk opinions there.

Still, I was shocked when I checked a few months ago and found that nobody else had really done a general-audience video about this thing. I was sure it had been covered to death, but not really! There's one video from thegurumeditation which doesn't really talk about the industry context - the stuff it "replaced" - and then a bunch of old VHS rips; not much else. So there's a gap here I could easily fill, but I'm still... not sure how.

Well, then I found out (a couple years ago, now) that NewTek didn't stop with the Amiga product. They went on to make Windows versions of the Toaster, and THAT IS SOMETHING I CAN TALK ABOUT. It's perfect for me, actually.

This story can be summarized as, "Company known for creating a single device that became a massive cultural touchstone goes on to make a series of similar devices, just as successful yet ignored for decades because they aren't That One Thing, and because they run on commodity hardware instead of a platform that's become a meme." That's right up my alley. I would LOVE to cover that, and I think I would have a much better idea how to do it.

Except... they're all gone. Like, Don't Bother Looking, You Won't Find One type of gone. NewTek made five Windows-based Toasters throughout the 2000s, called VTNT, VT[2], VT[3], VT[4] and VT[5],  and there are none on eBay. Nobody talks about them. There are zero leads, and I can't make this video without one.

An original Video Toaster NT finally showed up on eBay a couple weeks ago, and I have it now - it works, but it turns out it was a halfass, unfinished product! A really interesting part of the story, but I still can't proceed on the video until I have one of the later models.

So: If you know where to get one of these, or can ask around (they got used in tons of churches!) or even just have the software (I have the first-gen card, and if I had the CD for a [2] or [3] I could probably move forward) please get in touch. Otherwise, at the rate things have gone so far, this video will probably never be made.

Thanks!