In the 1980s, it was standard industry practice to bundle a BASIC interpreter with microcomputers, and the PCW followed this practice. While the PCW was primarily a dedicated word processor for business use running LocoScript, it was running on top of the CP/M operating system.
There were many existing implementations of BASIC for CP/M, such as Digital Research's CBASIC and the third-party ZBasic, but they followed the earlier 1970s model of compilers that were fed source code prepared in a separate text editor. BASIC was not built-in in these cases, the user would prepare a program and then invoke BASIC to run it.
In contrast, home computers of the era had moved to using BASIC as the primary interface for the machine. Instead of booting into CP/M or a similar OS, these machines booted directly into a BASIC normally stored on ROM. These also included a built-in screen editor. Mallard was based on this model, with an integrated editor that was tailored for the PCW's non-standard 90-column screen.
Although the PCW actually had excellent monochrome graphics support for its time and specification, closely comparable to the Hercules Graphics Card for IBM PC compatible computers, Mallard BASIC had no graphics support whatsoever. Instead, Locomotive Software optimised it for business use, with, for instance, full ISAM random-access file support, making it easier to write database applications.
It was also optimised for speed— it is named after the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallardlocomotive, the fastest steam locomotive in the world, once again displaying the company's fondness for railway-oriented nomenclature. In fact, the Locomotive Software name came from the phrase "to run like a train" and it was this theme that was used to name Mallard BASIC— no other Locomotive Software product was named after anything railway-oriented.
The Acorn version was designed simply to run the Compact Software small business accounting products Acorn was including to target its Z80 second processor at small businesses. Mallard's major innovation designed specifically for Acorn was the addition of the Jetsam B*-tree keyed access filing system to give similar (but superior) features to the Miksam product Compact had originally designed around.
Graphics could be implemented by loading the GSX extension to CP/M, but this was cumbersome for BASIC programmers.
The lack of graphics support was rectified by several BASIC toolkits, of which the most popular was Lightning Extended BASIC (LEB— see external links). This patched Mallard BASIC, replacing the redundant LET keyword with LEB, which could be followed by a wide variety of parameters to allow sophisticated graphics (for the time) to be drawn on screen, saved to disc, printed, and so on.
Probably the most widespread Mallard application ever was RPED, the text editor supplied with the PCW. The name was short for Roland Perry's EDitor, the program having been quickly written by Roland Perry, the Amstrad executive running the computer product development, when it was realised that CP/M-80 came with no usable full-screen editor, but users had a requirement to edit configuration files. The same problem was apparent with DOS Plus and MS-DOS supplied with IBM-compatible Amstrad computers, but the RPED for those machines was written in Intel 8086assembler, and not Mallard BASIC.
The IBM PC version of Mallard Basic is still available from LocoScript Software as an MS-DOS program, which will run under Windows as a disc-only version with licence or with the full Introduction & Reference manual.
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe.
Logo is an educational programming language, designed in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. Logo is not an acronym: the name was coined by Feurzeig while he was at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and derives from the Greek logos, meaning word or thought.
Amstrad was a British electronics company, founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar at the age of 21. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 1980. During the late 1980s, Amstrad had a substantial share of the PC market in the UK. Amstrad was once a FTSE 100 Index constituent, but since 2007 has been wholly owned by Sky UK. As of 2006, Amstrad's main business was manufacturing Sky UK interactive boxes. In 2010, Sky integrated Amstrad's satellite division as part of Sky so they could make their own set-top boxes in-house.
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors.
BBC BASIC is a version of the BASIC programming language released in 1981 as the native programming language for the BBC Micro home/personal computer, providing a standardized language for a UK computer literacy project of the BBC. It was written mainly by Sophie Wilson.
GEM is an operating environment which was created by Digital Research (DRI) since 1984 for use with the DOS operating system on Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors.
Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first version of BASIC published by Microsoft as well as the first high-level programming language available for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.
The Amstrad PCW series is a range of personal computers produced by British company Amstrad from 1985 to 1998, and also sold under licence in Europe as the "Joyce" by the German electronics company Schneider in the early years of the series' life. The PCW, short for Personal Computer Word-processor, was targeted at the wordprocessing and home office markets. When it was launched the cost of a PCW system was under 25% of the cost of almost all IBM-compatible PC systems in the UK, and as a result the machine was very popular both in the UK and in Europe, persuading many technophobes to venture into using computers. However the last two models, introduced in the mid-1990s, were commercial failures, being squeezed out of the market by the falling prices, greater capabilities and wider range of software for IBM-compatible PCs.
Locomotive Basic is a proprietary dialect of the BASIC programming language written by Locomotive Software on the Amstrad CPC and the later Locomotive BASIC-2 as a GEM application on the Amstrad PC1512 and 1640. It was the main descendant of Mallard BASIC, the interpreter for CP/M supplied with the Amstrad PCW.
The Amstrad PC1512 was Amstrad's mostly IBM PC-compatible computer system, first manufactured in 1986. It was later succeeded by the PC1640.
The Enterprise is a Zilog Z80-based home computer announced in 1983, but through a series of delays, not commercially available until 1985. The specification as released was powerful and one of the higher end in its class. This was due to the use of ASICs for graphics and sound which took workload away from the CPU, an extensive implementation of ANSI BASIC and a bank switching system to allow for larger amounts of RAM than the Z80 natively supported. It also featured a distinctive and colourful case design, and promise of multiple expansion options. Ultimately it was not commercially successful, after multiple renames, delays and a changing market place. Its manufacturer calling in the receivers in 1986 with significant debt. It was developed by British company Intelligent Software and marketed by Enterprise Computers. Its two variants are the Enterprise 64, with 64 kilobytes of Random Access Memory (RAM), and the Enterprise 128, with 128 KB of RAM.
LocoScript is a word processing software package created by Locomotive Software and first released with the Amstrad PCW, a personal computer launched in 1985. Early versions of LocoScript were noted for combining a wide range of facilities with outstanding ease of use. This and the low price of the hardware made it one of the best-selling word processors of the late 1980s. Four major versions of LocoScript were published for the PCW, and two for IBM-compatible PCs running MS-DOS. LocoScript's market share didn't expand with the PC versions, which were not released until after Windows had become the dominant PC operating system.
The Grundy NewBrain was a microcomputer sold in the early 1980s by Grundy Business Systems Ltd of Teddington and Cambridge, England.
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.
Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. In graphical user interfaces, these characters are much less useful as it is more simple and appropriate to draw lines and rectangles directly with graphical APIs. However, they are still useful for command-line interfaces and plaintext comments within source code.
The BBC Master is a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993.
DOS Plus was the first operating system developed by Digital Research's OEM Support Group in Newbury, Berkshire, UK, first released in 1985. DOS Plus 1.0 was based on CP/M-86 Plus combined with the PCMODE emulator from Concurrent PC DOS 4.11. While CP/M-86 Plus and Concurrent DOS 4.1 still had been developed in the United States, Concurrent PC DOS 4.11 was an internationalized and bug-fixed version brought forward by Digital Research UK. Later DOS Plus 2.x issues were based on Concurrent PC DOS 5.0 instead. In the broader picture, DOS Plus can be seen as an intermediate step between Concurrent CP/M-86 and DR DOS.
Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented computers of the time such as those running CP/M or the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business computers. Their most common uses were playing video games, but they were also regularly used for word processing and programming.
The Amstrad CP/M Plus character set is any of a group of 8-bit character sets introduced by Amstrad/Locomotive Software for use in conjunction with their adaptation of Digital Research's CP/M Plus on various Amstrad CPC / Schneider CPC and Amstrad PCW / Schneider Joyce machines. The character set was also used on the Amstrad ZX Spectrum +3 version of cp/m.
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