Concerning Winradio as an SDR:

See the November 2004, December 2004 and January 2005 issues of MONITORING
TIMES.
Dr. John Catalano did a series on Software Defined Radios.
The Winradio is a "software CONTROLLED radio"

A "SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO" could have it's frequency coverage and mode
of operation redesigned by software! A traditional PC controlled radio
could NOT.
As an appliance operator, the distinction makes no difference to me.

But in the big picture of things, it matters to all of us Radio Consumers
because radio specifications
will not be designed by the manufacture but by third party software
programmers.

It means lower cost, feature rich, flexible radios.
Imagine a radio doesn't do what hobbyist wants it to do so hobbyists
alter it's specifications. Mods are no longer in the realm of
the hardware hacker but in the software writer.

A bold concept. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! The future of our hobby is exciting.

Bruce
N9WTG





"Geoff Burginon" wrote in message
news:41fc1d89.2657046@news-server...
See http://www.winradio.com .

Hope this helps! :-)

Geoff

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 13:13:04 GMT, "tom" wrote:

Since personal computers are so powerful and cheap these days, I wonder if
there is a wideband reciever whose tuning function can be controlled by
PC,
then it would simply be a matter of writing the software (or finding
pre-existing shareware) to change the frequency that the radio is tuned
to,
and monitor the output of the reciever for signals, and you would have
essentialy the same thing as a thousand dollar winradio but perhaps for a
fraction of the cost.
I know that VHF transcievers can be interfaced with a PC to create digital
transcievers and all (almost all) of the functionality stems from software
subroutines instead of hardware on the transciever --- a 'software'
implementation instead of a hardware one, if you will. Rather than
purchasing a hardware "Terminal Node Controller", you basically emulate
the
Node controllers functions in software.
Could the same thing be accomplished with a reciever? Is there a reciever
out there that has solid state tuning that can easily be adapted to being
controlled by a PC? Or is there a really simple, clear-cut reason why
this
is a bad idea, that I'm just not understanding (but should be)?