[Coco] CoCo Joystick Poke?

[Manny]

theother_bob wrote:
> I frequently contemplated this in the past. In fact in my CoCo1 I had
> an internal joystick (stock CC1 stick) mounted to the right of the
> keyboard and a 4 pole rotary switch that would allow me to use either
> the internal or external stick... or maybe it would switch the
> internal between left/right input. I'm a little foggy on the details
> after all these years and have since removed the switch from that
> CoCo.
> 
> I would like to see a digital switch, analog multiplexer based. Is it
> correct that a CMOS chip will pass an analog signal? (ie. x and y
> axis) Could you then use, say, a few 4 to 1 multiplexers controlled
> by a 2-bit johnson counter triggered by a pushbutton. You hit the
> button to advance to the next input device. THere would need to be
> some way to keep the same device from being selected on both joystick
> ports.

I would love to see a trackpad similar to the built-in joystick... In 
fact, it would be very cool to see a CoCo laptop. (I've already seen 
theother_bob's CoCo Portable.) ;)

Seriously, with the FPGA being worked on, how far out of line is a CoCo 
based laptop?

-M.