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

[Kip Koon]

Hi K.,
Do you have any links or are they rather easy to find and are they downloadable?

Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of K. Pruitt
> Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2015 7:43 PM
> To: Coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] TRS-80 Touch-Pad "hack"
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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