[Coco] Opinions on using fake CoCos

[Allen Huffman]

We have a mixture of folks using:

1) Original real Color Computers.
2) Emulators on a computer, using the computer’s native keyboard and controllers.
3) FPGA recreations, usually using a PS/2 or USB keyboard and controllers.

Some systems like a Commodore, are very difficult to use on an emulator due to all the special keyboard characters and symbols that are not found on a modern keyboard.  My original VIC-20 games are difficult to play since they relied on the function keys on the right column of the keyboard, and the placement of modern function keys is not very easy to use.

I was told about these stickers you can use to retrofit a modern keyboard to have the proper symbols:

https://www.amazon.com/COMMODORE-NON-TRANSPARENT-KEYBOARD-STICKER-BACKGROUND/dp/B003BOUNSQ <https://www.amazon.com/COMMODORE-NON-TRANSPARENT-KEYBOARD-STICKER-BACKGROUND/dp/B003BOUNSQ>

This solves the “can’t find the key” problem, but doesn’t solve the layout problem.

The CoCo keyboard is close to a modern keyboard, beyond the odd placement of the arrows and F1/F2 keys.  Emulators remap the keys so when you do quote on a modern keyboard, it translates that into what would be SHIFT-2 (I think?) on a CoCo keyboard.  That works well.

But touch typing is very different switching back and forth.  A set of keyboard stickers could solve that, since emulators like Xroar will support “native” key positions (i.e. Shift-2 for quote, parens in the CoCo positions, etc.)

So I ask — Would a sticker set suffice and we’d adapt to the arrows/F1/F2 positions… Or does anyone think a replica keyboard would be of use, redone like the original layout of the CoCo 1 and 2?

		— Allen