Raspberry Pi is actively preventing enthusiasts from upgrading soldered memory to a larger configuration even when the replacement chip is technically compatible. The company says the restriction is intended to discourage unofficial high-capacity resales.
  • Godort@lemmy.caEnglish
    1331·
    1 个月前

    the measure is primarily intended to prevent third parties from buying lower-capacity boards, replacing their RAM with cheaper parts of uncertain origin and then reselling the modified hardware as a higher-capacity model. The company argues that such modified boards have not undergone its validation process and could subsequently generate support requests if unstable memory is blamed on the company.

    The solution to this decidedly rare problem is authorized resellers, not an arbitrary block on a very technically demanding upgrade.

    That’s assuming this is the actual problem though. If the problem is actually “We want to make more money by charging extra for ‘enthusiast models’” then this is the correct tactic to ensure that you aren’t undercut by cheap labor.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      611·
      1 个月前

      Their excuse definitely smells like bullshit. It just seems they want to do the Apple thing of making sure they get the money for the upgrade, plus a premium. Except even Apple has a technical reason they don’t allow upgrades, which Raspberry Pi doesn’t.

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
        82·
        1 个月前

        Nah it’s not technical reasons, it’s just greed and form over function, the new MacBook Neo proves that if Apple wanted to they can make a user repairable and even upgradable laptop, they don’t because the EU hasn’t forced them yet

        • dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          1 个月前

          How does the new MacBook prove that? The way their processors are made it’s impossible to upgrade RAM after the fact.

            • dogdeanafternoon@lemmy.caEnglish
              1·
              1 个月前

              Yeah I assumed that’s what you meant. That machine still uses an SoC with embedded ram. It’s not possible to upgrade it.

              It’s more repairable than previous designs, which is great, but that’s different than being upgradable.

              • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                1 个月前

                Yeah and it’s a measly 8 gb of ram, but they are stuck with that because of reusing the A18 SoC from the iPhones which sucks but I’m glad it forced other budget thin and light laptop manufacturers in that segment to wake up and compete

      • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 天前

        I’d love to hear the technical reasons.

        If I have a honest repair shop that I trust, with proper knowledge and tools, and with ram that I provide, I should be able to do whatever I want. And should be the same for fingerprint reader, and screen, and CPU.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      111·
      1 个月前

      From a consumer freedom standpoint this is shitty. And it does allow them to sell an enthusiast model at a premium without competing with an after market modder.

      But two things can be true. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable for the company to want to protect the integrity of the brand if unreliable after market sellers start releasing bad product indistinguishable from your own with your logo slapped on it.

      Even if you have authorized resellers entrusted with doing the upgrades and audited for quality, if you leave the door open, there will be unauthorized mods on the market too. It does hurt not only Raspberry Pi, but the entire resell market if you can’t trust the product to have their expected standard of quality. It still sucks, but I at least get the justification.

      A few years back, I worked in an assembly plant for a car company. One time when I was doing a quality containment, I found out that something like 30-50 cars were found to have a very slightly misaligned roof piece when it was welded, and it causes a slight, but visible warp in the roof. It was otherwise fine. Still water proof, still structurally sound, just a cosmetic defect. They were all quarantined to be stripped of any easily removable components and then the remaining parts and body would be scrapped.

      I asked why? Even if they didn’t want to put them out to dealers with a visible defect, they were still safe and functional. They could still offer them to employees for sale at a discount and make far more back for them than its value as scrap. The answer was that it could hurt the value of the brand as a whole if low quality cars were put on the market, even if only for resale. It was worth the loss of these 30+ cars to maintain a consumer’s high expectation of quality.

      I still think it may have been better to allow employees an opportunity to get a new vehicle at a great price with only a cosmetic defect. But I do get the competing concern there. You do want things you buy from a big company to have reliable quality.

    • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 个月前

      They already have authorized resellers, who they link to on their website. This problem would only come from unauthorized resellers, who would not qualify for warranty service. It might not help software support requests, but I don’t know how much support they offer for software since I don’t think they’re supplied with any. Anything hardware they should be asking for a receipt from an authorized reseller, and if the customer can’t provide it then it’s not covered by the warranty. And even if the customer can provide a receipt from an authorized reseller in their name, if it comes in for repair and has the wrong RAM then it’s not a warranty repair anyway (although I’m guessing for something this inexpensive they don’t repair individual units, they probably just send a replacement, so the counterfeit parts might not get noticed).

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      532·
      1 个月前

      If you had read the article instead of just blindly reacting to the title you would have seen that this is actually to prevent that.

      • chewypoops@lemmy.worldEnglish
        742·
        1 个月前

        I read the article. Fuck Raspberry Pi.

        Yes, they are claiming that this is to protect us, the consumers, by preventing us from buying unofficially upgraded boards that may be unreliable or use counterfeit parts on the secondhand market.

        But here’s the fun part: That’s a lie. They just don’t want you upgrading your own hardware when you could pay them more instead.

        It’s a hobbyist product. If you put “safeguards” in to block tinkerers, you’re dead to me.

      • Taasz/Woof@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        241·
        1 个月前

        Nahh, their reasoning is BS IMO. It’s not an iPhone or something it’s a hobby product for tinkering with.

        • veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 个月前

          If someone modifies an asic by soldering a new ram chip on it, that’s grounds to null warranty, no? So their undue support claims is BS, ditto to the reputational damage (as if they aren’t doing that right now).

          Or better yet, why don’t they modularize this component from the rest of the device?

    • chewypoops@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      1 个月前

      Yeah, it sure is. It’s a hobbyist product and they took away my ability to upgrade it. After 14 years of buying these boards, they decided now, during a global RAM shortage, to tighten the leash…

      I can solder new RAM into my MacBook or Nvidia GPU, but Raspberry Pi is the first to implement physical locks preventing RAM upgrades. What a fucking joke.

      • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 个月前

        I can solder new RAM into my MacBook or Nvidia GPU

        You still have to extract and modify the bios to recognize and address the new ram in those cases, you can’t just “drop in” more ram.

        That’s what’s being locked down, here. Raspberry Pi devices used to not care if you did so because the firmware was open.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          1 个月前

          I personally know someone who installed extra RAM on a Macbook Air at least, didn’t require modifying any firmware IIRC. It just detected it. Not sure how GPUs are these days, though.

          • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            1 个月前

            So if you take a macbook air with soldered-on ram, which was available in 2 configurations of 16GB and 32GB, those two configs are baked into the bios, you just need the correct density, speed, and CAS latency to go from 16 to 32.

            But if you stray from what’s in the firmware/bios, you’ll need to figure out how to get the ram recognized so it can be used.

            In a raspberry pi, the known configs are in the firmware, so resellers were taking cheap low-ram pis, replacing the ram with double-density and selling them for a big markup from their cost, but lower than a retail RPI.

            The new policy would force these resellers to mod the bios to keep doing it.

  • huquad@lemmy.mlEnglish
    34·
    1 个月前

    Another win for mini PCs. Pis priced themselves out of the market since pi4-pi5 imo

    I can get a second hand mini pc or Optiplex for much cheaper, and with quick sync

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    1 个月前

    The behaviour is particularly interesting because physically replacing the memory on a Raspberry Pi is already well outside the scope of an ordinary upgrade.

    I mean… aren’t hackers the target audience for Raspberry Pis?

    Yeah, if the reasoning they give isn’t just straight bullshit, then I guess I don’t want to see them drown in support tickets. But it also seems like this move runs pretty counter to the whole point of the Raspberry Pi.

    (Plus, can’t resellers buy 2GB models, redo some of the screen printing, and sell them as 8GB models without even trying to upgrade the RAM to 8GB? That seems at least as bad as getting a Raspberry Pi with a dodgy 8GB RAM chip.)

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      1 个月前

      I mean… aren’t hackers the target audience for Raspberry Pis?

      They used to be. But for the last few years it has looked less and less like that.

    • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 个月前

      For what it’s worth the original point of the Pi was to recreate the experience of the Commodore 64 or BBC Micro where they came with huge manuals with ample examples and were more or less bare hardware for cheap. Taking that metaphor all the way is how we got the 400 and 500.

  • kingkong@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 个月前

    shittification of technology by the ai companies much less innovation much higher cost much higher inflation caused by ai NOT deflation as elon and trump promised by ai. more gas lighting more hot air. less and less productivity.

    also raspberry pi is made for the DIY community else just buy a PC delusional doesn’t even know what their product is and was built for. my how the new culture are so far away from its roots after getting popular. this is why never ever let them become too big to not care about their core like all fang stonks and nvda google meta apple microsoft amazon all need to be canceled culturally. have no loyalty to any of them unless they give much better prices and product the answer is no and lower your prices.

  • atkdef@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    12·
    1 个月前

    I’m not really familiar with this industry, but as far as I know, there are quite a few pi-named alternatives from China. Banana Pi, Orange Pi, Lichee Pi, and there are probably more. Unless there’s something only Raspberry Pi can offer, this looks suicide to me.

  • Mwa@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    11·
    1 个月前

    might as well just buy a normal laptop(or something used) then or smth if i decide this restriction is not fine,
    also RPI5 8gb ram for 150~ usd alone is not worth it anymore, 80 usd was fine.