I found this link while cleaning out some of my old favorites folders. I don't remember how or when I got it but it's a pretty interesting story. Thought I would post the link here.
Video Poker Hackers
Mickey wrote:
I found this link while cleaning out some of my old favorites folders. I don't remember how or when I got it but it's a pretty interesting story. Thought I would post the link here.
There's one thing about that story I don't understand. The RNG was obviously clock-based, so the only way they could have hit RFs is if they timed it exactly right. Even with 0.1 millisecond precision, which is almost unheard of, that would require that the RNG's clock be running at "only" 10 KHz. That sounds fast, but in 1982, as a project for a Computer Science class at UC-Berkeley, I developed a functioning "electronic craps" system that worked pretty much the same way, but with a 1 MHz clock, so having a clock go at least that fast was very feasible in a 1990 VP machine - and to time a button push to 1 microsecond is almost impossible, as, even if your hand is moving at the speed of sound (about 340 m/sec), three different hands would be generated in the time it took your finger to move 1 mm.
-- Don