The KoalaPad is a graphics tablet, released in 1983 by U.S. company Koala Technologies, for the Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, 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.
Description
The pad was four inches square 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, which meant that it had a fairly low resolution and tended to jostle the cursor if moved during use. As an alternative to the drawing stylus, the pad could as easily be operated by the user's fingers for tasks that demanded less precision, such as selecting between menu items. 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.
KoalaPainter
The pad shipped with a simple bitmap graphics editor called KoalaPainter, developed for Koala by Audio Light, Inc. Although bundled with the pad, KoalaPainter could also be operated using an ordinary digital joystick. One unique feature of the program, for its time, was that it held two pictures in the computer's memory, allowing the user to flip from one to the other—a function commonly used in order to study the differences between an original and a modified picture, and to copy and paste between two different pictures. Some third-party bitmap editors could also be used with the KoalaPad, such as Broderbund's Dazzle Draw for the Apple II.
Ahoy! called KoalaPainter "a very powerful and effective color drawing package", and concluded that it and the KoalaPad were "excellent in ease of use, a fine choice for a beginner as well as young children". BYTEs reviewer stated in December 1984 that he made far fewer errors when using an Apple Mouse with MousePaint than with a KoalaPad and its software. He found that MousePaint was easier to use and more efficient, predicting that the mouse would receive more software support than the pad.
File format
The Commodore 64 version of KoalaPainter used a fairly simple file format corresponding directly to the way bitmapped graphics are handled on the computer: A two-byte load address, followed immediately by 8,000 bytes of raw bitmap data, 1,000 bytes of raw "Video Matrix" data, 1,000 bytes of raw "Color RAM" data, and a one-byte Background Color field.
KoalaWare
Koala Technologies offered more software beyond the bundled KoalaPainter and Graphics Exhibitor for use with the pad. Among these applications, marketed under the moniker KoalaWare, was educational software for use with customized keypads and overlays, such as spelling tools, music programs, and mathematics instruction software, as well as software for "translating" graphical designs into LOGO programs.
