NDN (Necromancer's Dos Navigator)

Inspired by the old Norton Commander, NDN (Necromancer's Dos Navigator) is a DOS file manager that features numerous options and configuration parameters.
It offers support for a built-in calculator, ASCII table, phone group, archive extractor, and history of viewed and edited lines, among many others.

Portable app with a console interface

It's wrapped in a portable package whose contents can be extracted anywhere on the local drive or a removable device so that you can directly launch NDN on any PC. It doesn't change Windows registry settings.
Similar to Norton Commander, the console interface contains dual panes and a menu bar with a wide range of options. Suffice it to say, users who are only familiarized with graphical interfaces are likely to have issues when trying to figure out how to work with this file manager.

Examine and modify files

It's possible to view files as text, hex, dump, disassemblies, databases or spreadsheets, edit them, rename or move files, copy them to archives, extract archives, split files, create directories, delete items, modify file attributes and timestamps, encode and decode files, as well as convert file names to uppercase, lowercase, capitalization, or switch case. Plus, you can alter file descriptions.

Resort to handy file management tools

Furthermore, NDN lets you edit volume labels, unpack diskette images, use a calculator, consult a calendar or ASCII table, manage a phone book with names, passwords and memos, open spreadsheet files, manipulate the OS environment, open the Windows Explorer context menu or open files in Windows Explorer, and execute OS commands.
The history with visited directories, executed command lines, edited and viewed files can be examined anytime, as well as deleted. It's possible to create list files, compare directories, count the directory length, set up columns, sort items by various criteria, apply advanced filters, change the drive, make smart selections, swap the two console panels, as well as save all NDN settings to an initialization file.

Evaluation and conclusion

Everything worked smoothly in our tests, thanks to the fact that NDN didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It didn't hamper system performance either since it needed low CPU and RAM.
All in all, NDN provides nostalgic users with a glimpse of the old Norton Commander in a dual-pane console interface that boasts a surprisingly rich set of file managing options.