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Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

raspberrypi.org

221–230 of 776 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#221
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had all RPi versions except RPi4, running at least 1 of them 24/7 since the first one was released, and by the first year I had a cron that dd'd the card every night, and I found myself dding the backup image at least 2-3 times per year. RPi3+ has had no problem so far, and I'm not upgrading to RPi4 out of fear of it becoming an unstable mess again.

Schools are not running 24/7 servers from them.

Schools are, however, probably power-cycling the Pi daily, and power-cycling can be just as detrimental to an SD card.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#222

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…

how did you find out about the local school throwing away 50+ small dell quad-core i5s?

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#223
post #170

Is there any information on why it is called the '400'? there seems to be no important specification with 400 in it, so where does the name come from?

The important specification is that this is based on Raspberry Pi 4, thus... 400.

Since it is modeled after computers in the 80s that were sold in a keyboard form factor, such as the Atari 400 and the Amiga 500, they apparently thought that a three digit number would hit the right note for the nostalgia they wanted to invoke.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#224
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because probably that's not the situation in India.

What do you mean by "not the situation"? That they can't afford old computers? That it's not practical? That they don't need and can buy newer ones?

The schools in india can barely afford computer. and so are not throwing them away 1-2 years later.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#225
post #147

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)

Is it really an affordable situation with the current pricing of the RPI to setup a computer cafe for the kids who don't have access to the computers and internet ?

Compared to old computers, it is.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m responsible for a fleet of a few hundred Raspberry Pis being used as home monitoring hubs - they use high grade SD cards, and are configured to write as little as possible while still fulfilling their function, yet we still see one or two a month fall of the internet because of SD card corruption. This is absolutely a problem. I believe the compute module is somewhat better in that it uses eMMC rather than SD car…

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t eMMC literally just an embedded SD card?

It is, and it is better because it probably has better chips, but it will die, and brick RPi in the future.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#227
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because probably that's not the situation in India.

What do you mean by "not the situation"? That they can't afford old computers? That it's not practical? That they don't need and can buy newer ones?

I think they are implying that situations where 50+ small dell quad-core i5s are being discarded is not common in India.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#228
Does the power port support USB 2.0 data lines? The Pi 4 B does, and one of the things you can do with that is make it emulate a keyboard. If that works with the Pi 400, it could be the ultimate programmable keyboard!

Edit: per https://youtu.be/3A7pQN5W08E it supports USB OTG, so it sounds like the answer is yes!

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m responsible for a fleet of a few hundred Raspberry Pis being used as home monitoring hubs - they use high grade SD cards, and are configured to write as little as possible while still fulfilling their function, yet we still see one or two a month fall of the internet because of SD card corruption. This is absolutely a problem. I believe the compute module is somewhat better in that it uses eMMC rather than SD car…

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t eMMC literally just an embedded SD card?

As someone who has also worked with fleets of devices (R.Pi-based and others) working off SD-cards, I can confirm what jon-wood is saying. For some reason SD cards fail at a much higher rate than eMMC flash chips in traditional SMT packages.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#230
post #210

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!

Actually this is probably incorrect - I got this information from https://ubuntu.com/blog/raspberry-pi-400-with-ubuntu-support but it looks like the BOURNS chip is just the usual ethernet magnetics, which are built in to the jack in the other Raspberry Pi models. There’s no visible connection to the power circuitry. (They are using a different ethernet jack which has a lower profile than their usual one.)
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