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I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#41

Post by jstanley »

umvi wrote: post #31
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24

I understand why the Raspberry Pi uses SD cards (cost, simplicity, ease of use) but the entire line would be so much more useful with onboard eMMC storage. SD cards are great for keeping cost down and getting started quickly by flashing OS images from a PC. However, enthusiasts spend so much time fiddling with external storage options and cobbling together messes of powered USB hubs, cables, external enclosures, and…

For those who don't know eMMC is basically an SD card that is soldered to the board

Why is that more useful than a removable SD card?

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#42

Post by mjayhn »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #19

> Then I accidentally yanked a cable USB-C is so outrageously bad in this regard. I have a smartphone on my desk, connected via USB3 for debugging. At some point it started reconnecting if I just slightly touch the phone or cable, which is extra fun if it happens mid-deployment.

I'm burning through something like 10-20 usbc cords a year. It's outrageous. I'm buying Ankers and "good" brands too. My car has ubsc to usbc and android auto and it used to be a pain (usba to usbc slowed it down) so I'm diligent about fast/good cables.

I have no working usbc-usbc cables right now. It's wild how quickly mine go bad and most of the time they're just plugged into a phone once a day (driving), if that.

I just have a drawer full of dead cables with some sort of usbc end..

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#43

Post by webmobdev »

umvi wrote: post #31
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24

I understand why the Raspberry Pi uses SD cards (cost, simplicity, ease of use) but the entire line would be so much more useful with onboard eMMC storage. SD cards are great for keeping cost down and getting started quickly by flashing OS images from a PC. However, enthusiasts spend so much time fiddling with external storage options and cobbling together messes of powered USB hubs, cables, external enclosures, and…

For those who don't know eMMC is basically an SD card that is soldered to the board

Then do we have "eMMC" equivalent quality SD cards that lasts just as long?

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#44

Post by pbalau »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #32
mikehodgson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check for pocket lint or other debris in the socket. This exact thing was happening to me, a minute with a toothpick fixed it.

Will check, but it's unlikely since both the phone and cable only ever sit on this desk. It's a pure debugging device.

Hot glue it in place? It's going to provide enough strength to keep the things attached, but still will be easy to remove if needed.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#45

Post by webmobdev »

Joeri wrote: post #28

I got a pi 400 to replace a 2009 mac mini that was serving as the kids' computer but was struggling to play the online games they wanted (including scratch) because of missing webgl support in recent chrome updates. Performance is roughly on par with the core 2 duo in the mini, but the graphics is more powerful and fully supported by webgl, so in practice it struggles less with the scratch environment and online game…

But why are you using Chrome in the first place - it's a known memory and CPU hog! Doesn't Firefox or other Webkit based browsers support webGL fully?

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#46

Post by snapetom »

jstanley wrote: post #41
umvi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don't know eMMC is basically an SD card that is soldered to the board

Why is that more useful than a removable SD card?

I think the comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek. The underlying storage tech between is the same, but eMMCs have a controller that handles the actual layout of the data. In a removable SD card setup, this is handled by the CPU, which of course has many other things to worry about. Having its own controller makes eMMCs more reliable.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#47

Post by avmich »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #39
taneq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really have to have the “bricked is relative” argument again? Edit: To be more constructive, how about a definition for “bricked” as “unable to be recovered by the intended users of the device through reasonably expected efforts.”

Seems to me the word has a clear sense of permanence built into it. The term arose because a brick cannot be transformed into functioning electronic equipment. A device is said to be bricked when it is no more useful than a brick. If you drop your smartphone into water, and it shows no signs of life even after a couple of weeks of drying, you've bricked it. The average user is not competent at repair, as that's a spe…

> The term arose because a brick cannot be transformed into functioning electronic equipment.

This makes term "bricked" somewhat theoretical, as in practice almost any state of electronics can be turned back to functioning. In extreme cases you'll have to replace vital parts (if imagination forbids actually fixing broken microchips with a lab equipment), but in many cases it's still possible.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#48

Post by stonogo »

webmobdev wrote: post #45
Joeri wrote: post #28

I got a pi 400 to replace a 2009 mac mini that was serving as the kids' computer but was struggling to play the online games they wanted (including scratch) because of missing webgl support in recent chrome updates. Performance is roughly on par with the core 2 duo in the mini, but the graphics is more powerful and fully supported by webgl, so in practice it struggles less with the scratch environment and online game…

But why are you using Chrome in the first place - it's a known memory and CPU hog! Doesn't Firefox or other Webkit based browsers support webGL fully?

I don't understand what "memory and CPU hog" is supposed to mean here. Chrome runs faster than Firefox on every single ARM device I've ever used, and since the parent comment is explicitly about running a web app I would guess that nobody really cares if it takes slightly more resources to deliver good performance.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#49

Post by drcode »

abraxas wrote: post #27
jops wrote: post #15

I learnt to program on the ZXSpectrum with "Write Your Own Adventure Programs for Your Microcomputer" [0] The RPi400 with Pico-8 seems to tick the same boxes, so I got one for my 10yr old. He's loving it. Perfect use case. [0] https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%...

I wish there was a bare metal option that boots RPI 400 into a BASIC or Python interpreter the way the 8 bit machines used to

Pick up a pocket chip for $40 on eBay- you have to click a single button after boot and then can start coding a game with pico-8 in lua.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#50

Post by JKCalhoun »

sorenjan wrote: post #26
TonyTrapp wrote: post #19

> Then I accidentally yanked a cable USB-C is so outrageously bad in this regard. I have a smartphone on my desk, connected via USB3 for debugging. At some point it started reconnecting if I just slightly touch the phone or cable, which is extra fun if it happens mid-deployment.

I think USB-C is designed to have the connector on the cable fail first, so maybe you can try to replace the cable?

Maybe it's the too-stiff cables. As devices have become smaller, lower mass, our cable rigidity, thinness has not scaled proportionally.
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