On Apr 8, 2017, at 13:06, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 04/08/2017 12:10 PM, Dan Roganti via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Remember, that step to seed the rnd generator is not perfect either , eg. RND(-32768) or whichever value if you use the same seed, guess what, you get the same random numbers :)
This is why you like to use something "random" to seed the rnd generator Usually every computer has a free running counter, meaning it's constantly being updated in the background
If some of my dustiest neurons are working, in the Atari at least there's a scan line counter from the video subsystem available for reading. At least I think it was something like that. That was great for seeding random number generators. The Apple ][ must have something like that.
Hahaha, NOPE. The Apple II is EXTREMELY Spartan hardware. There's not even a timer in there. The only hardware you can count on is RAM, some ROM, the (0 or 1 valued) cassette interface, and some miscellaneous stuff (speaker output, paddle connector, etc.). Getting good entropy to seed is hard on an Apple II. - Dave