[CentOS] AM/FM tuner for centos 4 or 5?

[Ken Key]

Jason Pyeron wrote:
> Looking for a radio tuner for my audio server.
> 
> Needs to do AM.
> 
> Any hardware reccomendations?

I hooked up an original Griffin RadioShark to my CentOS 5.1 server
for a lark last month, streaming with DarkIce.  Unfortunately,
that machine is dark and 2500 miles away - I won't be there for
2 more months.  Off the top of my head, google for "shark.c",
look for dependency RPMs on RPMforge (thanks Dag!!). I think
I had to manually install a recent version of "libhid"

Griffin stopped selling the RS and now has RadioShark2.  I
found a version of shark.c for it named shark2.c, so I don't
think the hardware is backwards compatible, but there is an
update version of the control program.  My notes are all
on the dark machine, but IIRC this blog is was my jumping off
point for what I figured out.

http://javier.rodriguez.org.mx/index.php/2006/06/10/griffin-radio-shark-icecast2-on-debian-gnulinux

Obviously, since it is for Debian, you'll have to deal with
the distro impedance mismatch in the instructions and adjust
for CentOS.

Also, since it is USB, you can get nice separation between
receiver and the computer.  The RadioShark has a lousy internal
antenna but does have an antenna jack.  I only played with
the FM tuner.  It does have an AM tuner but I have no
idea how good it is.

Another built-in alternative is BT848-based tuner cards, but
I think those are FM only - not sure.  It has been 5+ years
since I played with those and you might have to build a
custom kernel.  The RadioShark was a much better solution
(if only the bad OS X drivers had not screwed up my Mac Mini
so completely that I had to wipe and reinstall).

Hope this helps,
K^2