

What is Total Commander, and should you switch away from Explorer? He had become a master at using those tools. He had in that toolbox everything that he needed, nothing superfluous. The essence of his approach was to be completely self-reliant on his own portable toolbox. He switched seamlessly between Windows (using Total Commander) and Linux (using Midnight Commander), dropped into assembly code, manually sent binary commands over a serial communication line with SST to test the handshaking protocol, and hacked his way to figuring out the protocols. Marek’s first move after logging into the crusty Win98 machine was to install his customized copy of Total Commander (the version was 4.51 back then) which had in it everything he needed to deep dive, drill in, diagnose, stitch together, or prototype. We were collaborating on reverse-engineering the legacy BioSonics digital transducer as the first step in building a real-time embedded control system to replace the performance limited Windows 98 interface. I’ve been using TC since 2001, when I saw it in action used by the brilliant electrical engineer & programmer Marek Moszynski, professor at Technical University of Gdansk and cross-affiliated at the Polish Space Agency. Total Commander – by Christian Ghisler, configured for personal preference
