Editing Locomotive Software

'''Locomotive Software''' was a small British software house that did most of its development for [[Amstrad]]'s home and small business computers of the 1980s. It was founded by Richard Clayton and Chris Hall on 14 February 1983.<ref name=thereg-20140212>{{Cite news |url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/12/archaeologic_amstrad_cpc_464/ |title=You're NOT fired: The story of Amstrad's amazing CPC 464 |last=Smith |first=Tony |newspaper=The Register |date=12 February 2014 |access-date=18 August 2018}}</ref>

It wrote or contributed significantly to the ROMs of the [[Amstrad CPC|Amstrad CPC 464]], [[Amstrad CPC|Amstrad CPC 664]] and [[Amstrad CPC|Amstrad CPC 6128]] home computers, the [[Amstrad PCW]] wordprocessor and the later Amstrad-manufactured [[ZX Spectrum]] +2A, +2B and +3 machines, amongst others.<ref name=orderform-1990>{{Cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/locomotive_software_order_form#page/n0/mode/1up |title=Order Form |publisher=Locomotive Software |year=1990 |access-date=18 August 2018}}</ref> Its [[Locomotive BASIC]] for the CPC range was a fast and highly featured implementation of [[BASIC]] for the time and later led to the development of [[Mallard BASIC]] for Amstrad's [[CP/M]]+ machines. Locomotive was also responsible for the ports of the CP/M operating system to Amstrad machines&nbsp;— initially 2.2 for the CPC 464 and CPC 664 and later CP/M 3.0 ("CP/M+") for the CPC 6128, PCW range and Spectrum +3.

A later Locomotive BASIC was BASIC2 for [[Digital Research]]'s [[GEM (desktop environment)|GEM]] [[graphical user interface]], as supplied with the Amstrad [[PC1512]] and PC1640 range of PC clones.

The company also developed the [[LocoScript]] word processor for the PCW, which was a complete bootable environment in its own right with no separate underlying [[operating system]].<ref name=thereg-20150909>{{Cite news |url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/09/joyce_turns_30/ |title='A word processor so simple my PA could use it': Joyce turns 30 |author=Simon Rockman |newspaper=The Register |date=9 September 2015 |access-date=8 November 2015}}</ref> The company later produced a PC version of this software, but it was not very successful,<ref name=thereg-20150909 /> partly because it was a DOS application, just as the PC market was moving to [[Microsoft Windows]], but also because the program compared poorly to incumbents like [[WordPerfect]] in the more competitive environment of PC word processors.

The same team later went on to develop the [[Turnpike (software)|Turnpike]] Internet client for Windows, which was for many years distributed as the standard access software by pioneering dial-up Internet access provider [[Demon Internet]]. Demon Internet later acquired Locomotive Software.<ref name=thereg-20140212 />

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{Amstrad}}

[[Category:Amstrad CPC]]