Title :Diga! a Preview | Electronic Arcs By :Brad Grier | Volume 1, Number 3 Filename :Software5 | (c) 1987, Brad Grier & Authors --------------------------------------------------------------------- I recently had an opportunity to test Diga! out for a few hours. What follows is my initial impression, and not a full fledged review. In a future issue, we will more completely review this product. This car has no Options, everything you could want is Standard... It may sound like an ad for a new car, but Diga! seems to fill the bill. Every conceivable option seems to be available for computer telecommunications. What protocol do you use most. Diga! handles (get ready) Xmodem (standard and CRC), Ymodem, Kermit, Compuserve-B, Xon/Xoff, and it's own Doubletalk (more on that later). Ok, that's just file transfer protocols. Other nifty things Diga! has: A Phone book that is more like a personal database. You can search, and print entries to the printer. Dial modem or voice calls. Keep special notes about each entry. Quite nice! Macro Keys...you want em you got em...Nothing fancy...just nice to have. Capture Session and Text buffers. Two of them. One dumps to a RAM: or disk file, and the other to an internal Capture Buffer. You can later print out, or save the Capture Buffer. The session is automagically saved as it happens. A word or two about the Buffers here. They use RAM:. If you only have 86k free...and you use Ram: to save a session incoming text...you are going to run out of memory real quick. You can copy the Capture Buffer to a file, or to the Amiga Clipboard Device (which TxEd uses for Cut and Paste operations). This will allow you to use Diga! on an Amiga 2000 with a Bridge card, and capture information that you want to use in the MS-DOS side of the Computer. A well thought out feature. A REMOTE mode. Yes...now you can leave your computer on all day, and call in from a remote computer, having complete access to your files. Anyone else who tries and doesn't have the password, will get cut off. Unfortunatly, like a car with all the options, Diga! is not very easy on the old memory. Infact it is a memory HOG!. On a 512k Amiga, with an External drive, I have only 86K free for whatever else I want to do. If I want to compose a message while receiving a download, I can't, because my text editor needs at least 60k and then some workspace for the actual message... A redeeming feature. Double Talk. This is the niftiest protocol I have seen in a long time. You can send files to another computer running Diga!. When the file transfer is taking place, you can 'chat' with the user on the other computer. You can be SENDING AND RECEIVING AND CHATTING all at the same time. This is state of the art stuff! I noticed a slight decrese in transfer time when sending and receiving and chatting, on the order of 10-20%. Rough guess anyway. Ok, wrapping up, I havn't mentioned Script files. Yes it supports them. I don't normaly use Diga!..too much of a memory pig. But if I am transfering files with another user I like it, because of the chat and the ability to send and receive at the same time. As I said at the start...this is a Preview...a review is to come later..I hope!