gEDA: $random function

[James Bird <hwh-james-at-NOSPAMoptusnet_dot_com_dot_au>]

Hi All,

I see that this topic has been covered a lot on comp.lang.verilog, but 
not specific to icarus verilog as far as I could see.

When using $random without an argument one gets the same list of 
"random" numbers each time they run the simulation. I've seen that to 
avoid this, you may initialize the seed variable as equal to the system 
clock or date for the first time you execute $random, and subsequently 
execute without arguments.

To repeat with the same random number set you write the seed value to a 
file and use that to initialize seed to repeat a past simulation.

But using icarus, how do you set the seed variable to the system clock, 
or some other changing variable? Are there better ways of getting a 
non-deterministic set of random values on successive simulations?

James.