[Coco] TRS-80 Touch-Pad "hack"

[K. Pruitt]

I've been playing around with a "Koala Pad" marketed as the TRS-80 Touch-Pad 
for the Color Computer.

I cut out a clear notebook divider to the proper size, glued the soft 
buttons from a broken calculator to the clear divider and turned the 
Touch-Pad in to a series of  "switches" for lack of a more precise term. 
You press one of the calculator buttons and read the X,Y coordinates from 
the joystick port and you know which button was pressed and then your 
program acts accordingly.

I can think of absolutely zero practical applications for this "hack" that 
can't just be done by pressing keys on the keyboard.  But heck, it's another 
input device so I thought I'd toss it out there.  Obviously anything you can 
press gently in to the pad will work, including your finger, but the buttons 
target a more precise and easily repeatable X,Y location/range and they look 
kind of cool.  :)

No hardware modification are done to the Touch Pad.  This is just an 
overlay.

As I was writing this post it occurred to me that there must be overlays in 
existence for the Koala Pad already as the idea is rather obvious.  So I 
Googled it and sure enough there are a variety of overlays for this device 
already and have been available since the get go.  So my idea is 25+ years 
late.. but it still looks cool with buttons and you could put a lot of 
buttons on this device.