THE D-LINK DSB-R100 USB RADIO
Last updated: 12/20/99

Just about the time my wife's radio broke we received this novel device from D-Link...  Physically, it is an FM tuner with an antenna and a cable.  The rest of the radio is your computer and a Windows-based control panel (shown below).  It uses your sound card and speakers for audio and the USB interface for power and for control by the panel.

I was somewhat skeptical about the practicality of this "toy" for a few days.  Finally, I couldn't stand the store without it's normal ambiance of classical music any more and unboxed it, attached the whip antenna to the translucent tuner base, spidered the cable amongst the maize of stuff behind my computer, plugged the USB connector into the back of my Epox MVP3G2 motherboard, and the audio cable into my Creative Blaster Live! sound card.  After enabling USB in the motherboard CMOS and booting-up, Windows detected and installed the USB drivers from the Windows 98 CD and then detected the USB radio.  What you want to do here is cancel the USB radio installation, insert the CD which comes with the radio, and run setup on the CD with the Windows run command, and reboot.  Or, install the software before plugging in the USB connector...

Click picture to enlarge

The control panel provides a rich set of controls to scan for and store FM stations, set sleep and wake-up times like an alarm radio, and record and play-back FM audio.  A utility to convert wave
to MP3 files is included in the WaveFile menu.

Well, that'll teach me to be skeptical about a new product and to call it a toy.  It works great! The Boston Symphony Orchestra never sounded better in our store as it does now being piped out of the Cambridge SoundWorks PCWorks FourPointSurround FPS1000 Speaker System.

BOTTOM LINE.  The suggested retail price of the DS-R100 is $39.00.  Add some quality speakers like the FPS1000 Sound System or the PCWorks 3-speaker system and you will have an FM radio  which will sound as good, I'll bet, as some of the FM radios I am seeing advertised for much much more.  A nice stocking stuffer, indeed!

Larry

D-Link's web site.