Paper 2013/546

TRS-80 with a grain of salt

Jean-Marie Chauvet

Abstract

This paper presents early results of a (very) experimental implementation of the elliptic curve and stream cipher calculations of the Networking and Cryptography library (NaCl), on the TRS-80 Model I. Needless to say, the demonstration that such a library, which has been optimized for many modern platforms including leading edge desktops, servers and, recently, modern microcontrollers, is even feasible on such early home microcomputers is, at best, to be considered a recreation rather than as a practical application of technology. In the process, however, lessons were learned in implementing trade-offs for basic cryptographic primitives and, more importantly maybe, in experimenting with some transformative aspects of retrocomputing.