-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The idea: noise from an avalanching diode is applied to the input of an 8 bit shift register. The SR is clocked at some fairly high sampling rate. The 8 bits are made available on the printer port. The questions: Does the RNG need to accumulate bits, or can it simply present the most recent 8 random bits from the diode? (I imagine there'll have to be a protection against reading again before the SR has flushed) How fast can you sample an avalanching diode? (how many bits/second can I expect to harvest?) Would a less-than-quartz-accurate sampling rate be acceptable? (555s, resistors and caps are cheaper than oscillator modules) Or would a device driver to supply the sampling frequency be acceptable? What if someone (Mallet?) hacks the driver? (the driver is admittedly less portable) One last question... what aesthetics apply here? Would cypherpunks abide a largish box, or shun anything larger than a typical dongle? (smaller usually equals more expensive) - -- Roy M. Silvernail -- roy@cybrspc.mn.org will do just fine, thanks. "Does that not fit in with your plans?" -- Mr Wiggen, of Ironside and Malone (Monty Python) PGP public key available upon request (send yours) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMHHAPRvikii9febJAQHkIgQApvQh/Lc+5lLpVjJy50TDg6CjIETwmS1p Z+CxMmNiNCRlu8gdbIPiIuT7vrnGaOeuFF4OEzWKzUhokMJ7jNDaRZvgIX8DaNm9 R8+LtCqYmBASHlmq5iHHhFxESwsXCK4ulnWZuMVju4eEF6DNrZqHmSHChr/hQ2L6 df+s+KJ9lWY= =vosV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----