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Locomotive - Amstrad CPC BASIC Tool

Locomotive is a command-line tool for converting between ASCII text and Amstrad CPC Locomotive BASIC binary formats. It enables you to write BASIC programs in a text editor and convert them to the tokenized format used by the CPC.

Features

  • Encode: Convert ASCII text to tokenized BASIC binary format
  • Decode: Convert tokenized BASIC binary to readable ASCII text
  • Amsdos Headers: Optionally add Amsdos headers to generated files
  • Stdout Support: Decode can print to stdout for easy piping
  • Token Validation: Parser validates both tokens and command argument coherency

Quick Start

# Convert BASIC text to binary format
locomotive encode -i program.txt -o program.bas

# Convert binary BASIC to text
locomotive decode -i program.bas -o program.txt

# Decode to stdout
locomotive decode -i program.bas

# Encode with Amsdos header
locomotive encode -i program.txt -o program.bas --header

Use Cases

  • Development: Write BASIC programs in a text editor with syntax highlighting
  • Version Control: Store BASIC programs as readable text in Git
  • Code Analysis: Convert binary BASIC files to inspect their content
  • Cross-Platform Development: Edit on modern systems, convert for CPC

Integration

For DSK operations, use the dsk tool: 

# Add BASIC file to DSK
locomotive encode -i game.txt -o game.bas
dsk add disk.dsk game.bas

# Extract BASIC from DSK and decode
dsk extract disk.dsk GAME.BAS -o game.bas
locomotive decode -i game.bas -o game.txt

See Also

  • Command Line Reference - Detailed documentation of commands and options
  • Examples - Usage examples and workflows
  • BASIC Format - Information about CPC BASIC file format
  • DSK Tool - For DSK disk image manipulation (use dsk command in bndbuild or CLI)

Author: Krusty/Benediction 2019