The flaps on the DC-6 and DC-7 should theoretically operate the same way. There are defined settings but the pilot actually controls how much effectively is run out.
My good friend Joe who flew the 6s and 7s for AA mentioned that he could tell immediately if a right seater was a smooth operator or not by how they controlled the flaps. Similar to what I mentioned above for the manual flaps in Pipers.

We played with the idea of "infinite" flap sections for the Connie's but found that the calculations actually got quite complex and the the need to hit the flaps down button 20 or so times did not really appeal to us either.

Cheers
Stefan