2 Aug
2004
2 Aug
'04
7:33 a.m.
On Sun, 2004-08-01 at 15:32, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
re: computer 'subsystem' to produce clock time
(Nahh, it could be a very small source, like a smoke detector. Not very
dramatic though as a big scary lead coffin though :-)
Hmm, okay. Then I guess what we'd be looking for
is some device that
keeps continuous time. ... It would just have to be a
combination of hardware and software that kept the current date in the IBM
650.
Are you looking exclusively at the IBM 650, or any computer? Does it
have to be an 'automatic, electronic, digital, stored-program,
computer'? Time-stamping of 'data' trivially dates to telegraph/teletype
equipment -- I've seen stuff from the 1930's that does it.
I know you don't want tty stuff but just to point out that the goal
still seems vague to me.
My favorite on
the opposite end, is a random bit stream produced by
using the pulses from a geiger counter (and associated radioactive
material) to clock a long shift register. It's well-discussed, but I'm
not sure anyone ever produced one.
How fun. You'd have to shield it pretty heavily though or else your PC
would be glowing at night (talk about a case mod!) Has anyone ever produced a random number generator
that pulls it's "seed"
from the random background radiation you get on a TV set on a dead channel
(snow)?
Oh I'm sure from the principal, yes, thermal noise would be a great
source. Zener noise is easy too, not sure of it's distribution.