Bluetooth on the cheap

[bibilit]

I was looking for a cheap Bluetooth adapter, the Dlink 120 is known for working fine without drivers, but is currently unavailable or hard to find.

I had some money standing in a Chinese site (for a joystick not working a 100 %) and started looking in the bluetooth section.

Most of the Adapters were Windows only, but one of them was advertised as Mac Os compliant, so i placed my order (not much to loose, as the price was only 3 € including delivery, and money was already spent anyway)

The delivery was 3 weeks time, but yesterday evening the item was home.

The adapter was delivered without any CD (probably to save transport fees) but i don't care as those are mainly for Windows anyway.



The package didn't advertised for any Mac Os support.

Time for a test



Didn't get much information from Mac Os X about the adapter, but was recognized and the Powermac didn't complained about not being Bluetooth complaint.

So i switched on the Apple wireless Keyboard, and tried to pair the device... worked flawlessly :lol:



The keyboard was tested and worked fine.





Was tested with my mobile phone, and was connected easily.

I wanted to share, the device is named ES-388 and can be found easily.

 

[jruschme]

Under OX X, Bluetoosh is pretty much a no-brainer and you can get away with most any adapter. At least, that has been my experience.

The D-Link is special, IIRC, because it was the "official" Apple adapter and could be made to work under Mac OS 9. As I understand it, you pair the kb and mouse with the adapter under OS X. Next you run a firmware update for the D-Link with turns it into a generic composite USB device with two HID deivces. (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2218602?start=0&tstart=0)

 

[68kbits]

How is the range?

I have a cheap little usb nub bluetooth and I had to extend the stupid thing onto my desk for the keyboard to work flawlessly.

Can you get several feet from it with the tower on the floor?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

The other special thing about the D-Link is that it works pre-OS-load for keyboard and mouse. So if you have a keyboard paired to it in the OS, you can use it for pre-OS key combinations (Option to load boot selection menu, Cmd-Opt-P-R for PRAM reset, etc.) And I believe you need the D-Link to be able to wake a Mac via Bluetooth.