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Category talk:600X
From ThinkWiki
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!
