Category talk:600X

Pentium III Hardware Random Number Generator

Certain Intel Pentium III CPU chipsets provided a hardware random number generator, along with a CPU ID. So I naturally wonder whether my Thinkpad 600x (Pentium III 500 Mhz) has this feature. I was not able to find any discussion of it on the IBM site.

In the BIOS configuration tool (hold down F1 during power on) I see an option to turn on/off the CPU id. So I'm wondering...

• Does the 600X have the Intel random number generator?
• Does disabling the CPU ID also disable the RNG?
• Do current Linux distributions (Debian, Xandros, Ubuntu, Mepis etc) use the RNG to seed /dev/random?
• How can I tell if this is working on my (Xandros OCE 2.0.1) Thinkpad 600x?

Thanks for any assistance!