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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

#81

Post by bencollier49 »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #62
abraxas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Pico boots straight into BBC Basic: https://web.archive.org/web/20181109020203/https://www.risco... (IA link as it's been removed from the site, but the installer is still available via IA).

This is the correct answer. I've copied BBC BASIC games directly to a Pi running RISC OS Pico:

https://www.bencollier.info/projects/electronics/emulation/f...

To reiterate, the Pi can be made directly backwards-compatible with 8-bit games from 40 years ago. It's wonderful.

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

#82

Post by 908B64B197 »

grawprog wrote: post #23

I've been looking at either the pi 400 or or one of the pi 4 starter kits. For around the same price as the 400, I can get the 8GB pi and a full kit of accessories. But, I really like the idea of having everything just built into the keyboard. In your experience was the 4GB of RAM on the 400 reasonable? Ever since the 400 popped up on here i've been looking into both of them. I just worry the 400 lacks more long term…

There's a dead comments that's saying exactly what I'll say: The 400 uses a slightly different chip that can be overclocked to 2.2 GHz while the regular Pi 4 can't really go above 1.8 if I recall.

More info here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear...

EDIT: The comment I was referring to has been restored!

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

#83

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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

eMMC has several advantages over microSD cards.

For example, the microSD slot only has 4 data lines. eMMC isn't constrained to the microSD slot, so they can have 8 data lines.

The Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module has onboard eMMC. Jeff Geerling tests a lot of SD cards on the Raspberry Pi, but he found the CM4's eMMC is faster than any SD card he's ever tested: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-...

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

#84

Post by csdreamer7 »

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…

SD cards are getting nvme in the future with 7.0 specification. I wonder how that will affect performance.

https://www.slrlounge.com/sd-express-memory-cards-pcle-nvme/

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

#85

Post by rev_d »

tech5000 wrote: post #21

I have been debating a Pi400 vs a Pinebook Pro as an Xmas gift for a 10-year-old. The Pi400 looks great except that it doesn't support a webcam+microphone(+audio out?) out of the box and attempts to find an HDMI monitor with these things built in and supported by the Pi have thus far been unsuccessful. Is it odd to be considering a Lunux laptop for a 10-year old? The open source ethos of both machines, seems ideal fo…

The Pinebook Pro is pretty temperamental when it comes to things like battery management & performance.

The Pi has more memory, more computing power, and is more reliable.

Get him a Pi, and if he needs a laptop, pick up a used Thinkpad to go with the Pi.

Source: I own both a Pi 4 & a PBP.

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

#86

Post by antod »

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 got my start with a Spectrum and that book too. Far less luck interesting my kids in computers though.

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

#88

Post by heavyset_go »

m-p-3 wrote: post #80
webmobdev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

FF uses more memory on my system than Chrome now..

You can use cgroups to limit memory available to Firefox, and systemd-run gives you an easy path to do this.

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

#89

Post by stan_rogers »

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…

The default intent, and thus the default configuration, is to have a device that a kid can accidentally nuke without any lasting consequences. That's the whole founding principle of the thing. Lose that and you've lost the Raspberry Pi as a concept.

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

#90

Post by PragmaticPulp »

stan_rogers wrote: post #89
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…

The default intent, and thus the default configuration, is to have a device that a kid can accidentally nuke without any lasting consequences. That's the whole founding principle of the thing. Lose that and you've lost the Raspberry Pi as a concept.

eMMC isn't mutually exclusive with having an SD card slot.

Even if they removed the SD slot, you would still reflash the board over USB. That's how it's done with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. With some software development it could be even easier than fiddling with SD cards.

In education environments, microSD cards tend to disappear a lot. Having one less moving piece to lose would be a win.

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