Where Have You Gone, Peter Norton? (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Where Have You Gone, Peter Norton? (2014)

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99 pointssmacktoward69 comments

I read Peter Norton's Inside the IBM PC (1986 edition) [1] a while back, out of an interest in computer history. It struck me as being quite a bit different than today's technical books. It had a very conversational writing style, and it seemed like it was aiming to accommodate computer hobbyists/enthusiasts who wanted to learn more about how their machine actually worked. There were probably a lot more such people back in the 80's than today.

[1] https://archive.org/details/insideibmpc00nort

I remember reading a book on Delphi, some early version, it was a detective with some coding. If only I could remember the author, can't google anything right now.

Intrigued,I googled.

https://www.drbob42.com/reviews/explorer.htm

Ace Breakpoint's Database Adventure

Yes, this was a great book - Jeff writes fiction these days, but has updated his "Assembly Language Step by Step" for Linux and has a nice FOSS book on FreePascal

http://www.contrapositivediary.com/?page_id=1808

Thanks!

Melvin Bohacker was his nemesis, why we store such junk so readily in our minds?

Kick Ass Delphi Programming?

https://studfile.net/preview/415049/page:38/

When I worked at Symantec in the Peter Norton Group in Santa Monica in 1995 I was told they really wanted to get his picture off of the box as the royalties were too high (reportedly $1 per box but I never did confirm that). They had started the process of minimizing its use so that they could wean the customer off of seeing the image. Still customers loved seeing the picture so there was a constant tension

I was surprised to read in the colophon of one of the books that the "arms crossed" pose is a trademark of his: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton#cite_note-7

Arms crossed and rolled up sleeves!

So that was Norton? I always thought it was a random stock image.

Yes sometimes with pink shirt and makeup visible. :D

Great Scott! I was there! Good times.

Peter Norton's Guide to the IBM PC was good, but his Assembly Language book [1] was why ASM ended up being my second language, after BASIC. Then again, that wasn't enough to know how to create working programs, at least not for a ~13 year old me. In the book, you at least learn some of it by typing in all the code for a hex editor written in pure assembly (which utilizes calls to MS-DOS system calls). It was pretty tedious, reminding me of how Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel karate through repetition. After learning C though, I was able to write a hex editor in an afternoon, thanks to really internalizing how it should work from typing in the assembly version. I wrote that just search for and then remove the passwords in the Star Wars: TIE Fighter game. (I must not have still had the assembly one anymore. Weird.)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Nortons-Assembly-Language-Book/...

Oh, Norton Utilities.. Disk Editor... I am still pissed off on Symantec that they destroyed this beautifull product.

Anecdote: at the end of primary school (~16 years old or something) we had a teacher who has took time at the end of school and meticulously removed all the games that "came" to public computer in his class. It was cat and mouse game and I think he enjoyed it a lot, on our side, how to hide a game and on his, how to find it (and due to he started using Norton Commander the trick of renaming directory name to whatever±alt+255 didnt work anymore). Then the disk editor came to play, I think he wasted two days to remove directory name with real space at the end. At the end, he got a directory games on root and deep down in there directory with edited entry to point on root ;)

I too had the fortunate experience of picking up his Assembly book around the same age and it was indeed a magical experience. I got into real time computer graphics programming (the demoscene) thereafter thanks mostly to the Assembly.

I, unfortunately, didn't get the privilege of getting my hands on an assembly book. At 13, being inspired by the demoscene (I got the Unreal demo on a Simtel CD), I begged my parents to buy me Turbo Assembler. And I somehow thought that the included manual was going to be enough to get started (!). The manual had a great listing of Intel instructions, but I had no understanding of addressing modes, the stack, or what was required to make DOS system calls. Later, when I figured it out in college, I was mad because it was so simple and 13 year old me would have loved it.

Unfortunately, at that time there was no internet, and the public library only carried books on high level languages.

Argh. How I envy you.

By the way, how did you figure out graphics programming?

Nice! I tried doing a bit of demo scene stuff too (joined a group briefly) but never made anything worth releasing (the group “amour” had 4 productions but not with anything I made). I did write some fast graphics subroutines that were called from a C program. For instance, quickly put a bitmap on the screen with arbitrary x and y scaling, using fixed point numbers in assembly language. I made a scene with 3D vector balls but I had used 8 bit values for their positions so it ended up being jittery. Rewriting it was going to be too much work. Shows you the value of C where you can just change the data types and recompile. :) That book was a good foundation, and then stuff like the Michael Abrash black book later on for graphics.

I went through that book at around the same age and loved the format - seeing the hex editor “come to life” helped me internalize that complex programs can be built incrementally. It also helped me sail through my assembly language class years later when I was in college.

Anyone else sit and watch the old console-based defrag/speed disk run?

I was ~13 years old, not much programming experience yet but I was fascinated by the process and kept trying to figure out how it worked.

Same here, I did that on my dad’s 386/486 machines back in the 90s.

My fav utility was the File Explorer predecessor, Norton Commander. Hopefully someone else remembers these great tools. :)

The only piece of software from DOS/Windows I miss on Linux is an analog to Far Manager - THE descendant of Norton Commander app. No other 2 panel file managers come close, and mc just doesn't cut it. All those hotkeys are ingrained in my memory despite not using the application for more than 15 years.

I've been using Far Manager since forever, but also "mc" on linux/osx machines (as you've said, it's not very useable on Windows itself, tried the cygwin version, and meh).

Windows Commander (now Total Commander) was/is still good. It was the first piece of shareware I registered, for Windows 3.1. It's still in development today, with an Android version!

Total commander is a great successor I think. Once you get used to 2-pane logic, the efficiency boost with anything file-related is really huge. It is fast and has so many features - tabbed panes, quick recursive file content search, very nice comparison of 2 files, folders synchronization, built-in navigation in archives (I often edit files directly in packages, it recompresses them automatically) and archives within archives, great network/FTP browser and many more... it really packs few tens of great tools into one neat package.

One of many detractors from Linux in the past from me - whenever I tried any equivalent there, it was very slow, featureless, crashing etc. I hope these days the situation is better.

Whenever I look at any other colleague, who use that primitive File explorer or equivalent, how clunky and slow work it is, its sad that people don't do this one-time effort to transition to the tool which is so vastly better.

FYI: Total Commander runs on Linux with Wine fairly well. One notable problem with it (and Wine in general) is that it is not HiDPI-aware, so you get a miniature UI :(

Having said that, I think Krusader comes pretty close with the right settings / keyboard shortcuts.

It has one crucial downside: it does not run in the console. Ability to see image previews right in the app is NOTHING compared to capability run the app remotely.

It's what kills the most new attempts at filemanagers, like fman - for some silly reason they try to do it with GUI.

Well

- Midnight Commander

- Total Commander

And

- Double Commander

Are still employing those hotkeys.

Total commander does not work in console, that immediately rules it out.

Mc is okay-ish, but it lacks the excellent plugins Far had, and a multitude of small life improvements, like directory hotkeys, file selection options, great built-in text/hex file viewer (and previewer!). Mc is what I use all these years after leaving windows, and it's not even close to Far in user experience, unfortunately.

Most of the so-called OFMs (orthodox file managers) do:

http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/

DN (Dos Navigator) is not at all bad on Windows, cannot say on Linux, but it is worth a try.

Far is what i have replaced DN with. It's not even close, Far had great set of plugins and life improvements

Sure, I agree that FAR is on another planet, but I was referring to possible use under Linux, as said DN has a Linux version (which I never tested):

http://ndn.muxe.com/

Does anyone remember the Norton Desktop shell for Windows 3.1? It turned 3.1 into something beating the Mac in terms of a desktop experience. Absolutely amazing levels of customization, a full shell scripting language with GUI components reminiscent of Tk/Wish, I could go on.

That desktop plus the whole set of Windows 3.1 programs were a killer combo.

Sure I remember it, it also came with a sort of scripting (very much batch-like) language.

I remember writing a pseudo-GUI for PKzip in it at the time (WinZip was more or less the only graphical zip tool and it costed too much).

Shame that so many interesting GUIs like this simply fell away, and meanwhile my Linux GNOME desktop still doesn't feel as obvious and powerful as that machine did back in 1994.

Well, there was also the MC Shell, you can get a copy from here (in case you get an attack of nostalgia and have a VM or a spare old-old machine available):

http://reboot.pro/topic/752-mcshell-a-shell-look-a-like-to-m...

Don’t remember it, but sounds neat.

http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html has some screenshots.

Xtree was better

Norton Utilities, XTree Pro Gold, and Borland Sidekick were the tits on MS-DOS.

I still use a Xtree clone and it is nice. https://www.han.de/~werner/ytree.html

With at least one other, I far preferred PC Tools. Until Symantec bought and canned them.

PC Tools had a great tape backup program too - that was the real casualty of Symantec buying them.

At least I'm still not bitter :p

nc was awesome — it still lives on in a way, as inspiration for Midnight Commander[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander

Yes, Norton Commander was my go-to utility during the DOS era.

For a short time, my nickname (not just internet pseudonym, but real-life monicker) was "ndos" as someone in my circle of nerdy friends liked to call me that (I actually used 4dos, not its licensed variant, but let's not be too pedantic).

And yes, while it wasn't as great as the DOpus my Amiga friends always showed me, it was one of the great DOS apps.

I was more of a PC Shell (from PC Tools) person.

Even today, on every OS, I still manage files using a two-pane window and the keyboard unless I'm using a terminal.

Yes.

And I still find weird that Midnight Commander has no quick view functionality.

What's a quick view? I just press F3. It's quick enough for me.

It means you have the file list on one panel and the contents on the other panel.

So you scroll over the list and the contents update with each file.

SMH

yum -y install mc

A thread from 2016 (with a comment from a friend): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11211682

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856339

Boy. His book "Inside the IBM PC" was my first intro to really understanding how computers work and now I'm counting almost 20 years working as a software engineer. I think that book set me on this path because, IIRC, it talked about BASIC and might have had some programs printed in it and I typed them up in QBASIC. From that point on, I used QBASIC's help menus to teach myself how to program. I owe that man a debt of gratitude.

QBASIC also had two addictive games - nibble (the snake game) and gorilla. I progressed from these to Prince of Persia and later Doom. Peter Norton’s books introduced me to the secrets of the PC. IIRC, he also had a book that explained how to do TSR (terminate, but stay resident) DOS programs.

Gorillas! I once spent a week with some friends in a house where we found an old computer with no games except QBASIC's. I don't remember why but I implemented "training mode" with only one gorilla shooting bananas. Probably a feature request by someone who didn't have school that week...

Yeah, TSR was definitely the kick-ass programming technique at the time because it DOS was so limited. The only way to pep it up was to install some TSR sidekicks. Writing these TSR sidekicks was difficult if one wants it to do it correctly because there was no official way to do all the hooking stuffs. I remember I wrote a small utility to make correct statistics about my working sections even when the computer crashed. There were days with 12 resets or even more(!) when I was writing a keyboard drivers! Yeeh, it was such a good time.

> Don’t hold me to this, but I could swear that at least one version of the Norton Utilities sported an interface featuring an animated version of Peter

That was the in the Mac version at least http://www.atpm.com/3.11/images/norton3.gif

Fun fact. The dos "Norton Commander" program lives on with its open source linux command line tool "Midnight Commander" (mc on most linux distros).

I use it sometimes still:

http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_mc.php

FAR Commander on Windows[1] is the spiritual successor of Norton Commander.

Made by the guy who wrote WinRAR (and RAR format)[2].

[1]https://www.farmanager.com/screenshots.php?l=en

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Roshal

NC was for MSDOS, ie. text-based CLI. It had a TUI. MC has a TUI, akin to NC's.

There's a plethora of dual pane file managers. I like fman (cross-platform), which is a bit akin to Sublime Text.

fman author here, thank you for the mention! For a trip down memory lane and Norton Commander see https://fman.io/blog/dual-pane-file-manager-history/.

given that Total Commander is shareware and only requires you to click a button to acknowledge this, while still being developed, that tool is my advanced file manager on Win and 1st thing I install on a new Android device.

It's nice to think of him retired, relaxing on an island, hanging out with John McAfee and Mavis Beacon.

I don't think anyone could relax within a 50 mile radius of John McAfee:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#Legal_issues

Don't forget Sid Meier and Clippy!

The model for Mavis Beacon?

Peter Norton books were my first foray into 8086 Assembly, after I got into PC, lovely.

"Peter Norton's Assembly Language Primer for the IBM PC, XT, and AT"

Peter Norton was an early rock star in the PC world. I bought and used all his products. Then he sold out and all but disappeared.

He settled in Los Angeles and started assembling a major art collection. He bought so much art that he started giving it away to make room for more art.

http://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/7900-peter-norton...

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