Raspberry Pi locks down RAM upgrades in closed-source EEPROM
Raspberry Pi blocks changing RAM chips
A Hacker News discussion reacts to Raspberry Pi blocking users from swapping RAM chips on their boards. Commenters note the restriction is enforced through the closed-source rpi EEPROM, pointing to an open GitHub issue. Some argue the company is protecting itself from complaints about faulty third-party chips, while others call it a poor excuse and suspect a push to sell higher-margin, maxed-out devices.
That's quite disappointing. Whose hardware is it anyways? Yours, when you pay for it.
- Aurornis
There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts. When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.
- RandomGerm4n
I think they should instead just introduce a clear system for verifying that a Raspberry Pi is genuine. For example, a code printed directly on the device. If you enter that code on the website, you can see exactly which model it belongs to and how often it has been used. That way, you could determine whether a Raspberry Pi is new or used and whether it has been modified.
I saw that once at a thermal paste manufacturer. They used it to solve the problem of counterfeit thermal paste.You just have to get people to actually use the system and tell anyone else who asks for support but doesn't have an original copy to GTFO.This would allow them to avoid the increased support burden without limiting people's ability to upgrade their Raspberry Pi.
- squeegeeninja
The real story here is that people are selling modded Pis as higher-memory versions. And this check actually caught them + is circumventable. The restriction is somewhat annoying to a small subset of enthusiasts but seems to catch genuine fraud.
- geerlingguy
Reading through the EEPROM repo issue[1] makes me a little more sympathetic to the "feature", but I still don't like it at all.
It might help in the short term to stop dodgy resellers who mod the boards with cheap upgraded RAM to make a buck or two...
But the Pi itself is always taking one step forward, one step back in terms of firmware. I've been tinkering with some Qualcomm boards from Radxa and things are slightly better there, though you don't have anywhere near the ecosystem you get with Pi (or onboarding niceties).
- jorritposthuma
I love how we think we own our hardware, but secretly we don't. Surprised though that even a Raspberry Pi now thinks this as well. They grew big _because_ of tinkering...
- juancn
It would be much more user friendly if there was a way to check the serial of a particular PI and see it's original hardware config, manufacture date, and so on.
- ChocolateGod
They should make a form where you input the serial number and apply for a key, applying that key in config.txt disables the hardware verification checks on the bootrom.
- speedping
Raspberry Pi is going down the way iRobot did, succumbing to pressure from chinese players like radxa or orange pi.
Sad to see industry pioneers lose to players that copy them and undercut prices using cheap labor.