

The history of Norton Commander (and other early MS-DOS utilities) - thristian
http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml

======
RobGR2
As a fan of midnightcommander on linux, I did some research attempting to
confirm that it was a clone or copy of Norton Commander. I found on some old
forgotten ftp sites of DOS stuff a similar program called "dc", presumably for
"disk commander", that was a very trimmed down and fast version of the same
concept. I think dc looked more like mc in some of it's keystroke mappings. I
have no idea if dc copied mc or vice versa, however.

I believe dc was given away in a floppy disk inserted in a computer shopper
magazine sometime in the early 90s.

I built a floppy based linux to emulate the use of a parallel port "laplink"
to shift files -- you stick the disk in each computer, and mc pops up with the
files on the remote computer on the left and the local files on the right, and
you can copy them back and forth.

I would not might having mc on my android phone. Maybe I will try to port it.

------
chasingsparks
Coincidentally, I used the phrase, "since these were the days of DOS and
Norton Commander, QBasic was to be my playground," on a goal statement for a
PH.D. program earlier today.

HN to the rescue again confirming the chronology for me, without the need for
me to ask.

------
petewarden
This prompted me to see if there was a decent clone of NC for Unix, and it
looks like Midnight Commander is well-reviewed and open-source:

<http://www.midnight-commander.org/>

------
bliss
I never did get to grips with the likes of NC or XTG. They always seemed to
slow me down, kind of like they were designed for dummies. If I wanted to do
some serious shifting of files, I was happy with DOS, if I wanted something
visual, then Gem was there... Maybe I just started too late with PCs.

------
elblanco
I remember always using a cleverly named utility called "list" instead of NC.
It was faster and lighter weight. I had it renamed to "l" and stuck in my path
somewhere on all of my machines so I could pull it up in 2 keystrokes.

Finally had to get rid of it somewhere around Windows 98

------
malkia
I use mc on osx/linux, and far on Windows. Great products!

------
RichClaxton
That takes me back, I used to use NC on my 486 at university, great app in its
day.

