by avipars on 12/14/24, 7:16 PM with 41 comments
by webdevver on 12/15/24, 2:22 AM
it really does feel to me, like the final frontier of old-style closed-source "I have $20M capital and you don't, so screw you, we make the decisions around here, and no we aren't publishing the datasheets or firmware"-world, i dare say the final holdout.
imagine having an actual open source raspberry pi. You can read back the github sha id from a control register of the repo checkin that was used to cook the masks that were used to etch your chip, the gdsii masks and netlists are just a build artifact, the verilog is all there. nobody asks for the HDMI controller datasheets anymore, because its just a github link away to see where the control registers live. Questions regarding the 3D accelerator are answered with a quick perusal of the verilog.
its so obvious that this is the future destination - atleast, to me. its just a shame that its not around right now. that there is all this politics and heavy beurocracy that stands in the way, understandably so - this stuff is super expensive, and the investors want a secure return on their investment. but imagine how cool that would be. to have chips become as commonplace as github projects.
by dangus on 12/15/24, 2:34 AM
An x86 mini PC from the likes of Beelink is going to be way better at the computer stuff. Or choose some other microcontroller like an Arduino, or maybe just add GPIO to your PC.
by KennyBlanken on 12/15/24, 3:50 AM
Hearing that coming out of a HAM radio enthusiast whose father is a broadcast technician is a little strange.
The most likely explanation is either RF interference; NVMe drives suck down enough power to substantially self-heat during big transfers and I bet that causes all sorts of interesting RF problems, especially given the Pi isn't sold in a case.
Or power sag issues. The Pis have always been infamous for their terrible power supply designs, which seem to be intentional to give resellers a way to bend people over. It's the old "every phone you buy has a different plug and you need $100 in AC and phone adapters" nonsense we used to have to deal with to pad retailer margins.
I remember Motorola designed one of the Nexus phones to require a proprietary fast-charge protocol so that Verizon, who had retail exclusivity for a bit, would get to bend people over for the stupidly expensive charger. Verizon also got Google to permanently fuse the bootloader so installing an alternative OS was impossible. On a nexus phone.
by prmoustache on 12/15/24, 8:00 AM
I was interested in the concept of a pi400 but never bought one because there was only one spec and there was no way I could update it in the future.
by aj7 on 12/15/24, 5:10 AM
by undersuit on 12/15/24, 3:51 AM
Yeah yeah, just get a converter. I think the real reason the Pi Foundation didn't make the slot available is because they don't want to have to support the influx of broken cases when hordes of people tear open a product that isn't meant to be opened.