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. Random number generation itself is a fascinating topic and a very difficult nut to crack. There are multiple large books published about it. There are financial-industry-quality high-speed hardware random number generators on the market, used for generating crypto keys. Some are quite elaborate, using very fancy algorithms to de-bias the number stream. Some use reverse-biased P-N junctions as their initial source, and some even use tiny bits of radioactive materials coupled to scintillation crystals and photodiodes. It's a fascinating field. Generating true randomness is actually very, very hard. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA