KoalaPainter

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KoalaPainter

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Basic data

Maintainer Koala Technologies Corporation
developer Audio Light, Inc.
operating system Apple II , Atari 8-Bit , Commodore 64 , IBM-PC , TRS-80
category Graphics software
German speaking Yes

KoalaPainter was a graphics program for various 8-bit home computers in the mid-1980s . On the Apple II it was also known under the name KoalaPaint and on PC systems under the name PC Design . It was sold by Koala Technologies under the software label KoalaWare in combination with the approximately 10 cm × 10 cm KoalaPad graphics tablet and was very popular at the time.

service

The program can be operated with the supplied KoalaPad using the enclosed pen or with your fingers. The KoalaPad can therefore be regarded as the predecessor of today's touchpads . Control with a joystick or mouse is also possible.

Range of functions

The C64 version of the program runs in the so-called multicolor mode , which means that it has 16 colors and a resolution of 160 × 200 pixels. Coarse dithering can also create the impression of a higher color depth. The software has a selection function for rectangular areas and in this context offers the option of simple copy & paste . Various brushes, an eraser, a fill function, a freehand function as well as various line, rectangle and circle functions are available as drawing tools. A special ability for a program of this time is the ability to switch back and forth between two full-screen graphics. This allows two images to be compared with one another or parts of images to be exchanged using copy & paste. In addition, the software offers a zoom function for pixel-perfect processing as well as an undo function ("Oops"), which only allows the last action to be canceled.

File format

Type identifier of a KoalaPainter file in the CBM-ASCII character set

The C64 file format of the KoalaPainter graphics has a constant size of 10003 bytes. The file name consists of 15 characters, of which the first five are used as type identifiers and always correspond to the byte sequence 81 hex 50 hex 49 hex 43 hex 20 hex .

KoalaPainter C64 file format (size 10003 bytes)
Offset (byte) size content
Dec Hex
0 0 2 bytes Load address: 6000 hex = 24576 dec
2 2 8000 bytes Bitmap data
8002 1F42 1000 bytes Screen memory
9002 232A 1000 bytes Color ram
10002 2712 1 byte Background color

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Koalapad touch tablet - InfoWorld, 1983, 41 (5), 76ff.
  2. ↑ KoalaPad + - Tom Owad, Applefritter, January 18, 2004