Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
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Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#2I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me.
I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#3I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
One of the stated goals of the RPi foundation is to keep the price as low as possible. Adding a few GB of NAND flash adds ~$5 to your BOM for the part, plus you have to redesign and solder that extra component to the PCB. All told, it would probably increase the price of the board by ~$10, and cause suppliers to have to maintain additional models of boards in their inventory.
If you want a board with storage built in, look at the BeagleBone Black or the CubieBoard (there are several others as well). The communities for these boards aren't quite as large as the RPi's community but should still be large enough that you can get help doing whatever you need.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#4I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
I too have had problems with reliability, though more so when the device has already booted. e.g. numerous times I've had the device completely hang during file access.
When problems such as this crop up it really puts a dampener on the experience.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#5I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
Where are you obtaining your SD cards from?
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#6I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
I too have had problems with reliability, though more so when the device has already booted. e.g. numerous times I've had the device completely hang during file access. When problems such as this crop up it really puts a dampener on the experience.
True, USB IO deadlocks and power usage causing drops/freeze made me stop using it. It was a surprise how many things can go wrong when you're out of the comfort of an industrial brand built PC board.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#7I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
I too have had problems with reliability, though more so when the device has already booted. e.g. numerous times I've had the device completely hang during file access. When problems such as this crop up it really puts a dampener on the experience.
brand of flash matters.
before the raspi came along and popularized arm computing, there was a very lively scene around arm hacking out of existing devices. sheevaplug started the trend and people found that things like the seagate dockstar (a nas based hard drive dock) could be easily modified to boot a linux distro from usb and run as a low power headless server.
we kept a list of results from our experiences of what issues we had when trying to use new/different thumbdrives in the dockstar.
various issues with some brands included being unable to cold boot (boot from a power off state) or warm boot (boot when rebooting the system from a power on state). the brands that gave us issues were fairly consistent in this regards. we had the best luck with sandisk based thumbdrives.
i imagine the situation and cause is probably similar, if not identical, in this case.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#8I love the RPi and what it has done to introduce computing/programming/linux to more people. However I can't get past how unreliable booting from an SD card has been for me. I know reliability depends heavily on the SD card used and on the quality of board socket but I am disappointed that Rev 2 of the board did not come with the option of on-board flash.
Been lurking for a bit. Was hoping to say hello with a constructive comment but I have to jump in here.
I bought a Pi model B for my daughter. Nothing but terrible unreliability. Booting problems as you state, power problems with the USB ports, random hangs and crashes and problems getting half of the devices recommended to work.
I kind of expected that for the money but the thing that really pissed me off was when I raised these issues constructively on their forum, I was met with nothing but vicious denial and had my post deleted and account closed within an hour. Possibly the worst bit was the insinuation that I was clearly an idiot and this was all my fault. I'm technically literate (I'm quite handy with anything from an oscilloscope to GDB) but I can't imagine this doing well in the hands of teachers I.e. one of the target markets.
She now uses an old ThinkPad X61 and finds it a million times more useful and with all the extra bits required on the Pi to get it to work, considerably better value for money.
Not impressed. When your policy is to silence critics the product should be distrusted.
As for the initial design brief to produce a useful educational computer, I think it fails entirely based on the sheer amount of friction between opening the box and writing your first program. I was brought up on a diet of BBC Micros and Acorn machines and despite the brand association, the Pi is nowhere near the mark. Her school even bought 20 Pis that are wheeled out for open evenings and otherwise never used as well in favour of bog standard PCs running python.
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too have had problems with reliability, though more so when the device has already booted. e.g. numerous times I've had the device completely hang during file access. When problems such as this crop up it really puts a dampener on the experience.
True, USB IO deadlocks and power usage causing drops/freeze made me stop using it. It was a surprise how many things can go wrong when you're out of the comfort of an industrial brand built PC board.
That's where I see the issues crop up. "Uncontrolled shutdowns" seem to be a killer of SD cards for me even when using R/O only filesystems.
Wouldn't this be enough of a factor to point the issue towards software and not hardware though?
Re: Raspberry Pi Model A+ Board
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, USB IO deadlocks and power usage causing drops/freeze made me stop using it. It was a surprise how many things can go wrong when you're out of the comfort of an industrial brand built PC board.
That's where I see the issues crop up. "Uncontrolled shutdowns" seem to be a killer of SD cards for me even when using R/O only filesystems. Wouldn't this be enough of a factor to point the issue towards software and not hardware though?
Honestly I don't know. The rpi is a weird SoC though, and many things are handled in the GPU by a blob, even if it's software it's outside our control.