step Micro DS190P - WIFI

Overview

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As mentioned, I was fascinated by the Futro thin clients from Fujitsu the S540 and the S740. Comparing them with the previous version they are a leap ahead and the design got also very cool. The "x20" serie was also cool but in a big case and under powered. The features and the design of the "x40" serie are overcompensating the quirks and the shortcomings! Browsing the ebay a while ago, I was curious what else is based on the J4105 CPU that sports the S740. To my (pleasant) surprise I have discovered the "step Micro DS190P - WIFI" and of course I ordered couple of them. I was so excited and did not knew what to do and with whom to share this enthusiasm other than David Parkinson from https://parkytowers.me.uk! :-)

But why was I so excited? Well because this was looking very good: on the outside the case was looking exactly like a Fujitsu Futro without the red accent and I could already see on the back a second LAN port. The devices came also with a 128GB m.2 SATA SSD, a Windows 10 activated and a WiFi card.

David confirmed me that these are based on the D3544-S Fujitsu Motherboard! Later on I found the motherboard mentioned also on the Kontron internet site. The site of the company that assembled them is not very reach in details. I managed nevertheless to find:

• a page for the download of drivers: https://www.meinstep.de/downloads and select the "step Micro DS190P" model
• or download directly the .zip file from here: https://www.meinstep.de/files/treiber/step-micro-ds190p.zip
• or download a .pdf description from here: www.meinstep.de/plugins/step_mention//media/pim/mmo/1081109.pdf

But this is about it... nothing more... and I was somehow hoping for a BIOS Update (as this was required on the Futro S740 in order to get along with Home Assistant...)

Inside where more surprises but I will detail them in the next section. A picture-teaser with some shots side by side with a Fujitsu Futro S740:

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Hardware

Specifications

Disassembly

The Stand

My units came without a stand, but from the pics I saw on the internet there are stands available. The stand that I have from the Fujitsu Futro (S540/S740) matched the case of the step computer.

The case

The case itself is the same one as for the Fujitsu Futro S540 and S740, missing only the red accent line and the Fujitsu logo. There is no Step logo, and all the "Step details" are mentioned on a sticker on the lower side of the case. The case can be open very easy by unscrewing 2 small Philips screws in the back and sliding the top layer towards the back.

Power Supply

Seems to be a standard Fujitsu Power Supply adapter similar to the one used by S520, S540, S740.

CPU

The DS190P is fitted with a Intel Celeron J4105 quadcore running at 1.5GHz with a boost up to 2.5GHz. This works on lower frequency than the J4005 from the S540, but has 4 Cores. CPUBenchmark gives it a score of 2817 (vs. 1544 for the J4005). The single core performance is slightly lower than in the J4005, but the CPU takes full benefit of the quad core configuration! Details here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3200vs3159/Intel-Celeron-J4005-vs-Intel-Celeron-J4105. Similar to the Fujitsu Futro I saw also models equipped with the J5005 from other integrators (Terra in Germany).

Architecture:                x86_64
  CPU op-mode(s):            32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:             39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:                Little Endian
CPU(s):                      4
  On-line CPU(s) list:       0-3
Vendor ID:                   GenuineIntel
  Model name:                Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4105 CPU @ 1.50GHz
    CPU family:              6
    Model:                   122
    Thread(s) per core:      1
    Core(s) per socket:      4
    Socket(s):               1
    Stepping:                1
    CPU(s) scaling MHz:      92%
    CPU max MHz:             2500.0000
    CPU min MHz:             800.0000
    BogoMIPS:                2995.20
    Flags:                   fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acp
                             i mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_per
                             fmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni p
                             clmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2ap
                             ic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault c
                             at_l2 pti cdp_l2 ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ep
                             t_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust smep erms mpx rdt_a rdseed smap clflushopt intel_pt sha_ni xsa
                             veopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts vnmi umip rdpid md_clear arch_capab
                             ilities
Virtualization features:     
  Virtualization:            VT-x
Caches (sum of all):         
  L1d:                       96 KiB (4 instances)
  L1i:                       128 KiB (4 instances)
  L2:                        4 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:                        
  NUMA node(s):              1
  NUMA node0 CPU(s):         0-3
Vulnerabilities:             
  Gather data sampling:      Not affected
  Indirect target selection: Not affected
  Itlb multihit:             Not affected
  L1tf:                      Not affected
  Mds:                       Not affected
  Meltdown:                  Mitigation; PTI
  Mmio stale data:           Not affected
  Reg file data sampling:    Mitigation; Clear Register File
  Retbleed:                  Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:      Not affected
  Spec store bypass:         Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:                Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Spectre v2:                Mitigation; Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS Not affected; BHI 
                             SW loop, KVM SW loop
  Srbds:                     Not affected
  Tsa:                       Not affected
  Tsx async abort:           Not affected
  Vmscape:                   Not affected

The Linux lspci report

0:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake Host Bridge (rev 03)
00:00.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework Processor Participant (rev 03)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Gaussian Mixture Model (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation GeminiLake [UHD Graphics 600] (rev 03)
00:0e.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor High Definition Audio (rev 03)
00:0f.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Trusted Execution Engine Interface (rev 03)
00:12.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor SATA Controller (rev 03)
00:13.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:13.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:13.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:13.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:14.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Gemini Lake PCI Express Root Port (rev f3)
00:15.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:16.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 0 (rev 03)
00:16.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 1 (rev 03)
00:16.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 2 (rev 03)
00:16.3 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 3 (rev 03)
00:17.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 4 (rev 03)
00:17.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 5 (rev 03)
00:17.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 6 (rev 03)
00:17.3 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor I2C 7 (rev 03)
00:19.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Serial IO SPI Host Controller (rev 03)
00:19.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Serial IO SPI Host Controller (rev 03)
00:19.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Serial IO SPI Host Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor LPC Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 SMBus: Intel Corporation Celeron/Pentium Silver Processor Gaussian Mixture Model (rev 03)
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac) Wireless-AC 9x6x [Thunder Peak] (rev 29)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I210 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c)

Expansion

Storage: my unit came with a 128GB Kingston M.2 SATA SSD. A M.2 SATA SSD can be installed in all sizes: 2230, 2242 or 2280. For the 2280 it's going back to back with the PICe WLAN card. Reports on the internet for the Fujitsu Futro are that also NVMe modules are accepted but they will work only at SATA speed. Attention also on the M.2 Key as the "M" key are a no go. 2x SATA Ports are available that should be fed with power from a 4-pin connector looking like the old floppy disk connectors. The documentation mentions that SATA-1 is shared with the M.2 one. I do not know exactly if this means that they share the bus or if the exclude each other... I recently got a cable that I could use for power and I will try to test this. The S-ATA drive should be powered from a 4-pin connection next to where the RAM Module is positioned. This looks like the old floppy disk power connectors. Also for this I got a cable and I need to test it out.

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RAM: 1 Slot is available for RAM DDR4 and accepts according to specs up to 8GB. My device came with 4GB DDR4 and the 8GB Modules that I have for my S740 worked without problems. I did not had a bigger module to test it out. I had similar experience with the RAM Modules a lot of them not being accepted. I presume that what works for the Futro will work also for the step-pc and vice-versa. A helpful resource for this is the GitHub page of R3NE07 from here: https://github.com/R3NE07/Futro-S740/blob/main/ram_modules.md (in german!). As a rule of thumb the "slower" DDR4 seems to be "easier" accepted...

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Firmware

BIOS

Hit F2 at power-on to get into the BIOS.

Boot

For a one-off selection you can hit F12 at power-on to get straight into the boot screen menu without having to mess about in the BIOS.

BIOS Update

As mentioned above, unfortunately the producer page does not mention anything about BIOS update. I should check if the existing BIOS version resembles any Futro BIOS version and then it might be that they are compatible. Nevertheless I would not risk to brick such a beautiful device if not required. Up to now I did not found any restriction that would force me to a BIOS Update :-).

Standard Firmware

The version that I have, as mentioned, came with a 128GB M.2 SATA SSD and a corporate version of Windows 10. This version does not offer any option to upgrade to Windows 11 (could it be because the official upgrade period expired?). I will have to install a Windows 11 to see how it behaves. The CPU is still on the supported list for the Windows 11 25H2, and my installations of Windows 11 on other devices sporting the same CPU ran without problems.

Linux

I did not had any problem booting UEFI versions of Linux and I have set up the machine with both Home Assistant and Debian.

Personal Note(s)

Unit 1

I have decided to send one unit to David Parkinson from https://parkytowers.me.uk to round up his collection of thin clients! I hope he will enjoy it! :-)

Unit 2

The second unit I decided to use as a small docker server for all non important services and for the services that I want to test out. It runs and hums in my storage room with a power on/off control via Home Assistant. Now I will need to take it out to take some pictures of the BIOS in order to finish this review. This device is perfect for such a job of mini docker server: has low consumption on idle, powerful (for docker) quad core CPU, enough RAM, SSD and I can complete the storage (if required) via the available S-ATA ports. I liked it so much that I set it up and its functioning in the detriment of the Fujitsu Futro S740! :-)