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

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

#53
>USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine

As an aside, why isn't there a market for a say 10gig usb medium that isn't flakey AF like microsd etc that die if you squint at it a little too hard

USB enclosure and an actually SSD seems like the cheapest option. There has got to be a middle ground here...

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

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're essentially using a sorites paradox/Ship of Theseus argument to attack the idea that a piece of electronics can ever, even in principle, be said to be 'permanently broken'.

In common usage, we consider 'permanently broken' to be meaningful, we draw the line somewhere reasonable, and don't worry too much about giving a legalistic precise definition. I think my earlier examples stand up ok here. The phone is bricked, and the laptop is not. There may be edge cases where it might not be clear whether we can say whether a device is 'bricked' or not. That's not a problem. There might be an edge case in furniture where it's not clear if it's a chair or a table, but the categories of chair and table are still worth keeping.

...anyway it looks like a promising ARM-based computer ;-P

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

#55
post #27
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

Check out this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740

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

#56
post #27
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

RISC OS for RPi can do this. Not sure if RPi400 is supported just yet.

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

#57
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, they're marketed as "industrial grade MicroSD cards" and are available via electronics component distributors like Digi-Key.

e.g. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/swissbit/SFSD032G...

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

#58
post #53

>USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine As an aside, why isn't there a market for a say 10gig usb medium that isn't flakey AF like microsd etc that die if you squint at it a little too hard USB enclosure and an actually SSD seems like the cheapest option. There has got to be a middle ground here...

USB3 to M.2 adapter?

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

#59
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.

I've got a dictionary full of terms for you that arose from one concept to mean something else. Literally. Also figuratively.

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

#60

Sounds like a neat bit of kit. For anyone unfamiliar, it's essentially an ARM-powered PC, in the form factor of a keyboard. [0] > I was able to unbrick it I know it's a nitpick, but if it can be repaired, it's not bricked. [0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

From recent usage of the term 'bricked' here on HN I think those of us who consider bricking to at least require use of JTAG to alleviate to have lost the battle.

I suspect few people on HN have truly experienced a "bricked" device in their lifetime.

To you and me:

Static electricity from the carpet discharging into the joystick port of a Commodore 64? Bricked.

Yanked a cable from my Raspberry Pi and had to reboot in an unconventional manner? Not bricked.

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