There's some ugliness to acknowledge here in the fact that user remapping of controls is not yet implemented. That being acknowledged.

The easiest place to hack would be https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK/blob/master/Machines/ColecoV... — change the Input('#') to declare a key you prefer (e.g. Input('-'), and then change the corresponding case statement within the block starting on line 62.

If you follow that approach, you'll have modified the ColecoVision so that it declares a joystick with a minus key rather than a hash key, which it's hard to imagine the host binding getting confused about.

If you'd prefer to look at the other side of the interface and figure out why your host isn't posting '#' properly then you'll see the SDL fragment at https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK/blob/master/OSBindings/SDL/m... — it takes the first character of whatever SDL provides as the string input produced by a key (and always posts only to the first joystick).

You'll see similar logic for the Cocoa port at https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK/blob/master/OSBindings/Mac/C... varying only in that if Cocoa doesn't provide typed characters then it defaults to the first fire button.

I definitely need to go back and look at this stuff again. As I said, it's sort of a model that did make sense but has become overloaded. I think I need to switch to an internal representation of joysticks and joypads that preserves some information about layout (even if it's just number of rows of fire buttons, number of fire buttons per row, whether there's a start/select, whether there's a number pad, etc) and work forwards from there.

Thank you for he pointers. I will be camping but will try when I get back. And don't feel anything but pride for your code.