Commenters split over whether the lock is justified anti-fraud measure
2 Sep 21 9:27 AM · 2d ago · 12 comments · 1 source · development 2 of 5
A large Hacker News thread forms around the disclosure, with one camp citing documented reseller fraud with QA-reject RAM chips as justification, and another calling the fix defective-by-design and anti-repair.
“There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs.”
AurornisPhilE Raspberry Pi engineer and forum moderatorRaspberry Pi (company) Hardware maker whose firmware enforces the lock
Jeff Geerling YouTuber / Raspberry Pi hardware reviewer
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What people said 11 voices · best of 12 · verbatim
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The user friendly option would be to print the amount of RAM in very large letters on the PCB. There happens to be a lot of suitable surface on the PCB to the right of the text "Raspberry Pi 5" on the PCB anyway (§). Right now the amount of RAM is hard to read and easy to modify (move a little tiny SMD resistor).Drawback: You need different…
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I think they should instead just introduce a clear system for verifying that a Raspberry Pi is genuine. For example, a code printed directly on the device. If you enter that code on the website, you can see exactly which model it belongs to and how often it has been used. That way, you could determine whether a Raspberry Pi is new or used and…
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Reading through the EEPROM repo issue[1] makes me a little more sympathetic to the "feature", but I still don't like it at all.It might help in the short term to stop dodgy resellers who mod the boards with cheap upgraded RAM to make a buck or two...But the Pi itself is always taking one step forward, one step back in terms of firmware. I've been…
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There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts. When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.
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Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different.
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The real story here is that people are selling modded Pis as higher-memory versions. And this check actually caught them + is circumventable. The restriction is somewhat annoying to a small subset of enthusiasts but seems to catch genuine fraud.
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Raspberry Pi is going down the way iRobot did, succumbing to pressure from chinese players like radxa or orange pi.Sad to see industry pioneers lose to players that copy them and undercut prices using cheap labor.
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I think the bigger problem is that this was pushed as a firmware update, bricking previously working devices.Remember when FTDI did this and suddenly medical equipment at some hospital stopped working?
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I love how we think we own our hardware, but secretly we don't. Surprised though that even a Raspberry Pi now thinks this as well. They grew big _because_ of tinkering...
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It would be much more user friendly if there was a way to check the serial of a particular PI and see it's original hardware config, manufacture date, and so on.
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could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?
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