KoalaPad

KoalaPainter

C64 KoalaPainter menu screen. The "undo" command was called "Oops" (2nd row, left). The lowermost part of the screen contains the color choice chart (16 pure colors, 16 dithered). Immediately above the color chart is the brush shape bar (8 different shapes).
Developer(s)	Audio Light
Initial release	1983; 34 years ago (1983)
Operating system	Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, IBM PC
Type	bitmap graphics editor
License	Proprietary
Website	graphicstablet.org

The KoalaPad is a graphics tablet produced from 1983 by U.S. company Koala Technologies for the Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer (as the TRS-80 Touch Pad), Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64, as well as for the IBM PC.

Originally designed by Dr. David Thornburg as a low-cost computer drawing tool for schools, the Koala Pad and the bundled drawing program, KoalaPainter, was popular with home users as well. KoalaPainter was called KoalaPaint in some versions for the Apple II, and PC Design for the IBM PC. A program called Graphics Exhibitor was included for creating slideshow presentations from KoalaPainter drawings.

The pad was four inches square (i.e. roughly 10×10 cm) and mounted on a slightly inclined base with the back of the pad higher than the front. At the top, "behind" the pad, were two buttons. The pad hooked into the computer using the analog signals of the joystick ports (the so-called paddle inputs), which meant that it had a fairly low resolution and tended to jostle the cursor if moved during use.

Instead of the drawing stylus, the pad could as easily be operated by the user's fingers for less precision-demanding work, such as selecting between menu items (i.e. using the pad as a kind of "indirect touch screen").

The top-mounted buttons tended to be somewhat frustrating to use, as the user had to "reach around" the stylus to push the buttons in order to start or stop drawing. A similar tablet from Atari, the Atari CX77 Touch Tablet, addressed this with a built-in button on the stylus, which some enterprising users adapted for use with their KoalaPad.

The pad shipped with a simple bitmap graphics editor called KoalaPainter (aka KoalaPaint or PC Design), developed for Koala by Audio Light, Inc. Although bundled with the pad, KoalaPainter could also be operated using an ordinary digital joystick.