Information on calculator Random Number Generators from PPC Journal articles

[Paul Dale]

(11-07-2016 07:33 PM)Dieter Wrote:  But since the 34s can be equipped with a crystal: have you ever considered some kind of time-related random number generator? Could something like this have been realized?

It would be possible to use the time as a source of entropy to feed into the random function. My feeling is that the amount and quality of entropy produced would be quite low and there would have to be a means to disable this, so the random function could be seeded to a repeatable value. Having a crystal would make things less random I suspect.

Still, there would be nothing stopping the device collecting timer readings over a period and using that as a seed for a pseudo random number generator.


Pauli