Dos Navigator

[ziloo]

I have been using a file management program (under Dos) called
"Dos Navigator" for a few years now. It has some very nice
features that are even more useful than equivqalent commercial
software available. It works fine with my 286 as well as 486
systems.

http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/dn/index.php

If you downloaded the software, to set up the menu system, do
F10 -> Options -> Configuration -> Interface

What I enjoy the most from this software is its screen saver!
There are a couple of them that have something to do with flame
effect and plasma effect on the monitor. If you have a 486 system
running at 60 MHz, the flame effect is just awesome. Remember to
download "Additional Screen Savers"!

To set up the screen saver,
Options -> Configuration -> Screen Saver

One thing that I cann't figure out is whether the effect is done
by programming the hardware or by animation. If some of our
VC folks can solve this puzzle for me...

Cheers

ziloo :biggrin:

[MrTwister]

I used Volcow Commander.
It had a built-in screensaver :-)

[ziloo]

So anyways, I have included two screen saver files, namely
plassm.exe and colines.exe, into a zip file that is included as
attachment.

The first one runs on a pentium but the second one needs a
486 or lower Dos machine. Any suggestions/comments as to
how the graphics is done. It might be all by direct hardware
manipulation...?

ziloo

[lutiana]

Dos Navigator is pretty good. I downloaded and played with it for a while. But too me its all about the original Orthodox File manager, Norton Commander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander).

[Chuck(G)]

The first one runs on a pentium but the second one needs a
486 or lower Dos machine. Any suggestions/comments as to
how the graphics is done. It might be all by direct hardware
manipulation...?

Even though they're called .EXE files, they're really .COM files. They essentially set mode 13H with a BIOS call and then proceed to play with the VGA registers. It's not very complicated. On exit, a BIOS call is made to set video mode 3. The program code itself is only about 250 bytes long; the remainder of the program is tables for creating the images.