Fosfor has a new Dell P2422H screen, a new Slackware current Linux and a new CoolerMaster CK351 keyboard.
Fosfor, the new old Dell Precision T1700
After I got stuck overhauling the old (2009) Borium system I decided to shell out some money and buy a new, at least 'new for me', computer that would be
Inside Fosfor
The unit arrived today. It has a quick, toolfree access method. Press a button, lift a lever and the full side comes off. Inside you see a huge CPU cooler, a medium sized power supply and a drive assembly. Deep inside you see a mainboard with 4 DIMM slots of which one is populated with 4 GB. According to the specifications this unit should have
Changes
The system as such is delivered with 4 GB of RAM (1 stick) and a 120 GB SSD. Good enough for a webbrowsing windows user. I have higher demands since this will be the successor to Fluor, my current main machine.
First boot
After I mounted the new RAM, added some cooling paste to the CPU surface, mounted the SSD and replaced the CR2032 cell (not in that order) I closed the system, gave it a wipe with a moist cloth and put it in place, next to the 'Dell Ultrasharp 1704 FPTS' screen. All cables were hooked up. There was no OS on anything so I just wanted to enter setup. So I repeatedly pressed F2 and eventually I ended up in the BIOS setup, where everything was locked.... It could only be unlocked with the admin password, which I did not have and which was not '0000'. A web search revealed that I had to pull the 'PSWD' jumper on the main board. That jumper turned out to be under the VGA card. I tried several options and none worked. This however worked:
The jumper is a protection, an override. With the jumper on, you cannot change any BIOS setting, unless you have the admin password, which I still do not have. And it is not likely that I will ever get it since this is a used machine.
I changed some important things in the BIOS setup: smartd monitoring, intel speedstep and something with wait/sleep states.
Get an operating system on it
Yes. You got it. I will install Slackware 64 on it and make it multilb so I can run both 64 and 32 bit software on it. Get yourself a disk image from Alien Bob's slackware mirror and burn it to a USB stick with
dd if=slackware64-current-install-dvd.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=16Mwhere 'sdx' is the descriptor of the USB stick. You can find out which letter it is with the 'lsblk' command. The installer process is easy:
System maintenance
jed lilo.confLook for the word 'timeout = 1200' and change it to 'timeout = 25' so the system waits at most 2.5 seconds before booting the OS. Also add a line with 'lba32' somewhere in the top of the file. Exit the editor with Ctrl-X Ctrl-S Ctrl-X Ctrl-C. Next, run the command 'lilo'.
echo clear >.bash_logoutto erase the screen after logging out
ntpdate pool.ntp.org
What did it cost?
Not much!
Dell Precision T1700 SFF 160 2x4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz memory 16 Adata SU-800 512 GB SSD 40 AX 510 soundbar 21 bits and bobs 14 --- + euro 250Fosfor is burning hot. It runs like a bat out of hell. Greased lightning. When in XFCE, the system load monitor is at 1% or something like that. The colours are great, action is fast. And it is silent. When doing system diagnostics, I tested the CPU and chassis fans. When running at their maximum RPM's, they sound like an air raid siren. But during normal operation you only hear the clicking of the keyboard or the whine of the mousewheel. The Passmark rating for the CPU was 8031. Well above average for Windows users.
User mode changes
As user 'jan' I changed some parts of the system to fit my needs.
-rwxr-xr-x 1 jan users 377 Apr 10 2022 exivtract*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jan users 28 Dec 30 2021 freq01 -> /home/jan/Oberon/klim/freq01*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jan users 28 Dec 30 2021 freq02 -> /home/jan/Oberon/klim/freq02*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jan users 28 Dec 30 2021 freq03 -> /home/jan/Oberon/klim/freq03*
exivtract is a program. The other three are symlinks to programs. The path is changed with a line like
export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH
Fixing the PATH and PROMPT
The PATH problem was fixed once and for all by chaning a line of text in /etc/profile. The line is now
PATH=and the secion in~/.local/bin: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:$PATH
I want the path reflected in the prompt. This is a quite normal approach within most slackware consoles. The problem was, that 'Konsole' does not automatically process the commands in /etc/profile. That was solved by this .bashrc file:
. /etc/profile alias lls='ls -lh' alias tls='ls -lhrct' alias cls='clear'That solved it all.
The hosts file
The '/etc/hosts' file is your primary DNS lookup. When the requested URL is not in your local /etc/hosts, the machine will consult your router. My hosts file contains:
# # hosts This file describes a number of hostname-to-address # mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem. It is mostly # used at boot time, when no name servers are running. # On small systems, this file can be used instead of a # "named" name server. Just add the names, addresses # and any aliases to this file... # # For loopbacking. 127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost 192.168.56.9 fluor.fruttenboel fluor 192.168.56.11 natrium.fruttenboel natrium 192.168.56.15 fosfor.fruttenboel fosfor 192.168.56.16 zwavel.fruttenboel zwavel 192.168.56.17 chloor.fruttenboel chloor 192.168.56.21 scandium.fruttenboel scandium 192.168.56.22 titaan.fruttenboel titaan 192.168.56.23 vanadium.fruttenboel vanadium 192.168.56.24 chroom.fruttenboel chroom 192.168.56.25 mangaan.fruttenboel mangaan 192.168.56.26 ijzer.fruttenboel ijzer 192.168.56.27 cobalt.fruttenboel cobalt 192.168.56.28 nikkel.fruttenboel nikkel 192.168.56.29 koper.fruttenboel koper 192.168.56.99 router.fruttenboel router 192.168.56.156 hp559.fruttenboel smartinkIn this file, the IP address 192.168.56.15 is linked to the name of the machine. Once I got an error from the FTP server: it could not find the server name (I forgot the line '192.168.56.15 fosfor.fruttenboel fosfor') and after adding that line, the troubles were solved.
Getting mocka to run
At first I got into all kinds of unresolvable errors, Installing mocka is easy: just untar mocka.tgz in /usr/local/
and set an environment variable. But then you need to compile some programs, with the mocka compiler itself.
The 'as' assembler would throw all kinds of error messages: it could not process the 'pushl' instruction.
Investigation showed that I only had the 64 bit as version, so I got a 32 bit binutils package, converted it to a
compat32 package and installed that. Then I noticed I forgot to set 32 bit mode. Then I found out I need to set
the ARCH environment variable with
export ARCH=i586From this moment on, I could compile programs with mocka but the linker would choke on a wrong 64 bit file: liblto_plugin.so. The error message was:
Mocka 0608m
.. Compiling Implementation of BasicIO
.. Compiling Implementation of Storage
.. Compiling Implementation of ByteIO
.. Compiling Implementation of RealConv
.. Compiling Implementation of TextIO
.. Compiling Definition of Signals
.. Compiling Implementation of Signals
.. Compiling Implementation of MemPools
.. Compiling Implementation of Clock
.. Compiling Program Module tst
.. Linking tst
>>
LREAL.c:28:1: warning: return type defaults to ‘int’ [-Wimplicit-int]
28 | BEGIN_LREAL(){}
| ^~~~~~~~~~~
libc.c:4:1: warning: return type defaults to ‘int’ [-Wimplicit-int]
4 | BEGIN_libc(){}
| ^~~~~~~~~~
miscc.c:17:1: warning: return type defaults to ‘int’ [-Wimplicit-int]
17 | BEGIN_miscc(){}
| ^~~~~~~~~~~
/usr/bin/32/ld: /usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/12.2.0/liblto_plugin.so: error loading plugin:
/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/12.2.0/liblto_plugin.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
./machen: line 26: mockabin/tst: No such file or directory
Sorting out what happened here and how to circumvent this.
This is a difficult subject. It took quite some time and in the end, it is impossible to have Mocka produce 32 bit executables. The multi-libbed system RUNS 32 bit executables with lightning speeds. But it won't compile them. C'est la vie. It is easier to make a system multiboot: one 32- and one 64 bit Linux each in its own partition.
Getting obc to run
'obc' is the Oxford Oberon compiler and it is my favorite language to program in. It was not developed for Slackware but with some minor tweaks it will run very well. I installed version 3.1.2 It needs a little tweak, to be carried out as root:
cd /usr/lib64 ln -s libffi.so.8.1.2 libffi.so.6which will make the compiler produce executable code, but with a warning of a missing file. You can just ignore that warning. My prime numer calculator needs 2:35 minutes to find all primes upto 100 million. Fluor, my i3 machine needs 7:30 and Borium needed 15 minutes. A friend used a similar program in python and he had to pull the plug after 4 hours....
Download this copy of obc from fruttenboel: obc-3.1.2-amd64-_3.1.2.txz
A new Dell P2422H screen for Fosfor
This is a Del 24" monitor from their 'Professional' productline. It has:
But the colours were off. Not much, but you could clearly see it 'in the whites' on photo's. I was afraid it being the screen needing calibration or the quality of the DVI -> HDMI cable. In the end it was due to the colour balance. I just selected the bottom option 'Custom colour balance' which was on 100% for all channels (but there are sliders for each channel). Now the colours are spot-on.
A new operating system
18 months ago this was a test bed system. Now that I am going to use it more, I will install the Slackware current that I also installed on Titaan. Installing it was easy. Now all my main machnes run comparable 64 bit linuxes.
A new CMOS RTC battery
I do not use this computer daily, but last Tuesday I needed to use it. But it would not start. There was no beep-code, so that was OK. The amber and white power indicator lights did some blinking but in an odd way.
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