Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu!bradb
From: bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown)
Subject: Re: How do I get random #s?
Message-ID: <89Feb12.132442est.10867@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <19415@dhw68k.cts.com> <225800121@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <3198@ttrdc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 89 13:24:37 EST

>In article <225800121@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>I hooked an ADC converter and a hot resistor to my computer and xor'ed the 
>results from it with rand(). This gives me about 10000 really random numbers
>a second. It is not trivial to get REALLLY random numbers out of such
>a setup, but it can be done.


I'm curious -- how do you ensure the spectral purity of the signal that
you sample with the ADC?  Also how do you calibrate the measurement so
that the samples are uniformly distributed over the *entire* dynamic
range of the ADC?

					(-:  Brad Brown  :-)
					bradb@ai.toronto.edu