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First post, by Jo22

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Hello everyone,

I just realised the now famous Norton Commander was released about 30 years ago*.
It's astonishing how much time has passed since then and how technology evolved.
Back when Norton Commander was new, the NES was the new hot games console everyone wanted.
The first Amiga just came out, Tetris appeared and the Atari 2600 was still a popular console among video game players.
This was a time before the Web existed, before modems were popular and affordable. A time we watched back to the future.
In these early days of online services people were -if at all- connecting via acoustic couplers to mailbox systems (BBSes), Fidonet, the Usenet or now forever gone services like Quantum Link (Q-Link), GEnie, CompuServe or the Minitel/BTX/Videotex family.
In those days, kids dreamed of having their own walkman and robots were still a fascinating thing.
And of course there were no smartphones, so people had to send each other a message in a bottle, phone each other
using an ancient, analogue communications medium (do you remeber telephone boxes?) or met in real life face-to-face ..
Ok, there were already pagers, fax machines, car phones and -oh- you could send messages via earlier mentionend
online services. And there was CB radio, of course. But you know what I mean..
There still was a faint veil of magic and mystic surrounding technology of the day.

As for myself, I've been using this version since it was given to me by my father several years later
when I was a very young person.
It's glowing blue appearance accompanied me trough many nights and days when I was on my PC playing
games, reading text files or doing ASCII art.

Srb48lJ.png

Here's a photo of the original version and the manual from 1986.

Curious ? Read The History of Development of Norton Commander

But enough talking, enough about me.. What about you ?

What kind of memories of Norton Commander do you have ?
..or did you use the another program or a clone ?

And how did it affect your computing experience ?

Please post your memories! Everyone is welcome! 😀
And don't forget the cake, err.. the photos!

(*Eventhough the exact release day isn't known, the file date of NC 1.00 is said to be 05/15/1986. See the hyperlink above.)

(My copy was released a year later, but the day and month are the same. So May, 15th really is the birthday. Happy bday NC!)

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 1 of 19, by VileR

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Didn't use NC extensively back when it was a thing - I was more accustomed to PC-Tools' PC Shell, but then I still use a "clone" of sorts (Total Commander) to this day.

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Reply 2 of 19, by Dominus

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It shaped my file handling habits ever since. Can't live without an NC clone 😀

Do you remember the ill fated NC for Windows?

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 3 of 19, by Jorpho

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My first experience with it was in Norton Desktop for DOS, which was pretty cool in its way.
http://toastytech.com/guis/ndtd.html

I couldn't really see the advantage of "Norton Commander Mode" compared to the standard UI, but as the years have gone by I can see the appeal; I even used Krusader last time I had to muck about in Linux. These days NC clones seem to be referred to as Orthodox File Managers.

Reply 4 of 19, by kixs

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I liked PC-Tools v5 better then NC. Everything was done by the shortcut keys and you could do things faster. Newer PC-Tools (v6) was worse. When FAT32 came out, old PC-Tools didn't like it and by then switched to Windows Commander. I use it ever since. So thanks goes to NC after all 😀

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 5 of 19, by lightmaster

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Hey Jo22!:
Used nc extensively and pctools too, used volkov commander and other commanders a well., used windows commander now called total commander.
Very interesting nc photo and link, Didn't know about ndtd, thanks to all!
Cheers

25071588525_735097840e_b.jpg

Reply 7 of 19, by BloodyCactus

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I was a huge NC fan (and anti xtree!), I ended up writing my own NC clone for linux. its quite capable too.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 11 of 19, by eL_PuSHeR

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I have used all programs mentioned here but I preferred NC. Right now I love my registered copy of Total Commander on w10. Windows File Explorer has always (and will) suck.

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Reply 12 of 19, by rfnagel

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Norton Commander, WOOHOO! Been using NC since it's first incarnation, and here are some screenies of version 5.5 running under Windows XP, that I STILL use even today 😀

I don't remember how much NC cost, but I purchased NC versions 2-5.5... still have my original floppies and manuals too 😀 Mum's the word, but I originally "obtained" version 1.0 from "questionable sources" back in the late 80's <grin>.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207 … 81&l=05afc2f0e9

13240135_10207908051196881_4696901510656254682_n.jpg?oh=d9c6dd1912f725410c6656da4e4dfba0&oe=57E59566

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207 … 17&l=3ae18a9b83

13226669_10207908548649317_5474278554504536726_n.jpg?oh=ee50b2d06cf68fe6601d9c3da7dcc8b1&oe=57DC65B5

P.S. Attached is a screenie of Total Commander (that I use on a daily basis), configured to look and function like Norton Commander 😀

Attachments

  • Norton_Total_Commander.png
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    File comment
    Total Commander (a.k.a. Windows Commander) configured to look and function like Norton Commander.
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Rich ¥Weeds¥ Nagel
http://www.richnagel.net

Reply 13 of 19, by Joey_sw

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I use NC, i especially liked its file extension association:
I mapped most image format extension to my favorite dos image viewer program,
the .MOD extenstion to a simple but effective dos mod player,
and the *.gb; *.gbc; *.sgb to gameboy emulator.

And when windows 95 became poplular i tried the NC for windows because i never really like windows explorer, for some unclear reasons i didn't like the NC for windows.
But Windows Commander (now known as Total Commander) for windows appear and I like that one instead especially its FTP functionality.

-fffuuu

Reply 14 of 19, by kixs

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Windows Commander was out even before Win95. I begun using it in 1994 in Win3.11 - shareware version 1.40. It's funny when you look back and see how subtle changes do to a program over the years.

Back to Norton Commander 😉

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 15 of 19, by dr_st

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Dominus wrote:

It shaped my file handling habits ever since. Can't live without an NC clone 😀

Same.

And I know some folks who swear by X-Tree. I guess whatever you learn first is what you will be most comfortable with down the road (in the majority of cases).

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 18 of 19, by rfnagel

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Norton Commander v5.0 in all of it's glory, running fullscreen on my old 486 DX4-100 several years back 😀

http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/sno … _486DX4-100.htm

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  • Weeds_486DX4-100_03.jpg
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    Weeds_486DX4-100_03.jpg
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    File comment
    Norton Commander v5.0 in all of it's glory, running fullscreen on a 486 DX4-100 :)
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Rich ¥Weeds¥ Nagel
http://www.richnagel.net

Reply 19 of 19, by Dusko

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I used it a lot back then, I guess it was version 5.x, don't remember exactly. Good memories! I still use it all the time in my 486 build. Love it!

Does anyone has a pdf of the manual version 5.5 (or 5.51)?? I was looking online but the only one I was able to find is version 5.0.
..or maybe someone that has it can scan it?

Cheers!

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