A chaotic generator is a circuit that can be modeled by a piecewise linear (PWL) system whose each subsystem is a dissipative system with unstable dynamics (the latter is called an unstable dissipative system, UDS). Switching dynamical systems based on UDS in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) generate multi-scroll attractors e.g. by series of step functions, saturation, or hysteresis. Generalized multi-stability appears when two PWL systems are coupled as master-slave, or the equilibria of a PWL system are separated in pairs generating at least two double scroll attractors. An application of multi-scroll attractors to pseudo-random number generation is also presented.