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Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#201

Post by numpad0 »

wott wrote: post #195
qwertox wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Complaints like yours are relatively rare. I've stopped complaining because I already know how the issue manifests and how to solve it. A SD-card is not a proper replacement for a drive, it's a fine storage medium.

As far as I am concerned, I consider SD cards the equivalent of a floppy disk. The equivalent of a hard drive would then be a CF card (unfortunately much less common than SD cards these days). Or of course any USB drive if we give up on the card format/connection style.

Modern day CF replacement is CFexpress. PCIe 3.0 x1 NVMe, forward compatible with XQD.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#202

Post by ddalex »

qz2 wrote: post #187
C1sc0cat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably as the pi was designed for 6th formers to use - letting 8-10 year olds lose on them :-)

No all GCSE so 14+ students. The issue is usually that they freeze or crash under "desktop use" all the time and people pull the power out and back in again to reset them. This flexes the HDMI and USB connectors which eventually break or the cables give out. During the reboot cycle is when the SD card gets borked, or randomly suddenly. It's really a terrible computing experience compared to using a simple off the she…

These are classic symptoms of underpowered PIs. 99% of USB power supplies are not fit for a PI :(

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#203

Post by tyingq »

geerlingguy wrote: post #13

I was lucky to get a pre-release version to test, and I decided to tear it down before I started trying it out. I posted this blog post with detailed pictures of the insides, and some more details and performance benchmarks: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear... There are also a couple videos linked in the post, if you're more visually-inclined. Fun fact: the Pi 400 (and Compute Module 4) bo…

How is the keyboard? It looks, uh, cheap, so I'm curious if typing on it is an ok experience.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#204

Post by maxme3 »

Any recommendation for a monitor?

My 5yo son has fun with an external keyboard connected to an old Android tablet. He learns to type and write basic math and words.

I'd like him to jump to the next step. I was contemplating buying him a monitor and a mouse to plug in an old Raspberry with linux distro for kids.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#205

Post by kingosticks »

rwmj wrote: post #164
qz2 wrote: post #59

Can we please have a Pi without a crappy storage interface. It's either a microSD card or something dangling off USB. An M2 SATA or NVMe would make this credible but 99% of the problems I've had with the Pi platform is storage related, either being knackered microSD cards, terrible performance or USB power problems.

The RPi 4 has USB 3 + UAS which is actually quite decent. I use it for Aarch64 development[1]. It boots and runs entirely off the SSD, and the performance is not spectacular but perfectly usable, and being it's a regular SSD it should be at least as reliable as a laptop. It also has a firmware bug where it cannot boot unless there is an (empty, unused) SD card in the slot, which is annoying! [1] https://rwmj.wordpres…

Sounds like they fixed (read: worked-around) that issue in https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases/tag/v1.17

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#206

Post by itsoktocry »

minerjoe wrote: post #171
brainless wrote: post #119

As an engineer/founder from India who dreams of access to the Internet for everyone on this planet, these are the efforts that make me smile. I am in the process of sorting out my financial situation - tough founder luck. But I am happy to order a few of these (and monitors) and rent a small garage to give local kids a free computer lab to learn. (Kolkata, India)

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free. One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser…

>One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely.

I think broad computer illiteracy in the general population has convinced people that you "need" a new, powerful computer. In reality, 95% of the population can get away with any decent computer from the last 10 years. Grandma isn't training a neural net, she's checking Facebook.

I continue to use a 2nd generation i3 desktop as a "daily driver" for a lot of my computing/server needs, without issue.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#207

Post by numpad0 »

kingosticks wrote: post #191
lmns wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SD cards with wear leveling and error correction are hard to find and can easily be more expensive than similar SSDs.

I was under the impression most non-awful SD cards had some sort of wear-leveling these days but there's no standard for it so they don't advertise it on the front like SSDs. I couldn't really find any proof either-way about this, just a few instances of people looking into it: - https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/27619/is-it-... - https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/ex7dvo/quick_...

I think every microSD and USB sticks by now has WL across the board, especially at awful grade. WL and ECC are must at current [price, BER, capacity, bit-per-cell] or something.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#208

Post by 101008 »

raverbashing wrote: post #193
minerjoe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free. One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser…

I don't know why you're downvoted. This is exactly how it's done in many places. A 10yr old computer is perfectly fine for this, maybe even older. Yes it might not play all youtube videos, but it works.

Because probably that's not the situation in India.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#209

Post by qwerty456127 »

MarcScott wrote: post #32
qwerty456127 wrote: post #24

I would buy immediately if it also had a display and a battery to make a laptop (and a cooler so I wouldn't have to worry when I start a long compilation routine on it). Looks great otherwise.

That would probably quadruple the price. Look at PiTop. They used to include batteries and a display, but have moved away from that, as these are the most expensive peripherals. You can by a cheap display, or use your existing TV. A USB power supply isn't too expensive either.

Why quadruple, anyway? I've seen quite a number of ~$200 laptops and found their screens and batteries tolerable (although, obviously, not really good).

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#210

Post by fanf2 »

One thing that the Pi 400 has that the 4B does not is POE (power over ethernet) built in: the chunky BOURNS chip near the ethernet socket is a POE transformer. So it only meets network, display, and mouse to work!
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