Locomotive BASIC
Locomotive BASIC
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| First appeared | 1984 |
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| OS | AMSDOS |
| License | Proprietary |
| Influenced by | |
Locomotive Basic is a proprietary dialect of the BASIC programming language written by Locomotive Software on the Amstrad CPC (where it was built-in on ROM) and the later Locomotive BASIC-2 as a GEM application on the Amstrad PC1512 and 1640. It was the main descendant of Mallard BASIC,[1] the interpreter for CP/M supplied with the Amstrad PCW.
There are two versions of Locomotive BASIC: 1.0 which only came with the CPC model 464, and 1.1 which shipped with all other versions. BASIC 1.1 was also shipped with the Amstrad CPC Plus series machines, as part of the included game cartridge.
Development[edit]
Development was based on existing work recently undertaken writing Mallard BASIC for Acorn Computers Z80 addon for the BBC Micro. It is reported to have taken around 12 weeks to enhance the existing code, and was "very influenced" by BBC BASIC, though adding additional functions to do things that would have required assembly language on the BBC.Michael Elkan