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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

> using a custom file navigation program that resembled the popular “Norton Commander” application.

I wonder whether it had to anything with Volkov Commander which was a COM-sized much faster alternative to Norton Commander.

Fun memories: I uploaded it to SIMTEL in 1993 whose operator promptly complained to the operators of the university mainframe where I had an account for pirating Norton Commander and in turn I was booted from that VAX. Being 18, I ... didn't react the best however this incident started me on very interesting paths. One, I have social engineered my way back to another account (it didn't last long but still) and started using Unix and soon Linux because of this... way more useful knowledge it turned out than VAX/VMS.

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I spent all but a few seconds left on my account on the school 'Prime' machine trying to figure out how to hack the time quota system. Near the end I got pretty nervous both because nobody else was even close to maxing out their quota which would surely have led to some pointed questions and because if I failed I might not have been able to turn in my assignments. But once that problem was solved the ROI for the time spent on it was paid back with interest ;)

Did you remember to tweak your grade?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSRigsskFR4

Hehe, no I didn't need that and besides I left after the first year to go earn a living anyway.

The program in the video uses Turbo Vision interface, so the closest thing is DOS Navigator [1]. Also DOS Navigator has some Arvid support [2], so it could be Dos Navigator itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator [2] https://github.com/maximmasiutin/Dos-Navigator/blob/master/A...

To this day I'm still using Far Manager (on Windows) and midnight commander (mc) on Linux/OSX

I am still Far as my primary file manager and quick viewer/editor when I'm on Windows, and I've tried far2l (which is great) but for some reason when I'm on macOS my brain just switches and I'm back in Finder.

oh I wasn't aware of far2l - I'll have to try it! Thanks!!!

Oh I am using Double Commander myself.

Total Commander on Windows, Double Commander on Linux desktop and Midnight Commander on Linux text mode.

Norton Commander-inspired interfaces were all rage back then. RAR for DOS had NC-like, single panel interface.

In this tradition, 7-Zip GUI still has a dual-panel mode

Given the number of upvotes and comments on a story about MC a few days ago¹, they're not that dead now.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39075316

I use it nearly every day

Somebody dignified them with the pompous title of "orthodox" file managers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man...

No, the Orthodox was Windows File Manager, because you know, icons!

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