[Coco] Recreating the CoCo keyboard

[Rick Ulland]

If you control the matrix, or have a non-mylar sheet keyboard, one option is to separate the keys ALT and CTRL from the PA6 row (cable 8),
then add a toggle switch to select PA6 or PA3 (cable 5). Viola! They are up/down arrows now.


-ricku
  



On 10/21/20 8:54 AM, Allen Huffman wrote:
> On Oct 21, 2020, at 5:09 AM, Mark McDougall <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> I was far more competent on the TRS-80 Model 1 keyboard with the separated arrow keys than I ever was on a PC keyboard with clustered arrows. I think the Model I game "Penetrator" is impossible on a clustered keyboard.
> I expect we code for the controls.
>
> I moved from a VIC-20 with no arrows to the CoCo so I was probably just happy to have them, even if they didn’t allow moving the cursor around.
>
> I’m guessing it wouldn’t be possible to make a simple switch to toggle key positions on a real CC3 keyboard, but I bet a translator could be done. I so would have wanted that back when I was converting to the 3 and still playing a lot of 1/2 games.
>