Posted by edandersen 1 day ago
Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM.
Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr...
--
(§) as can be seen here https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...
These operations are not hobbyist level, they have access to the machinery to make it trivial.
It is so trivial anyone that's ever done fingernail polish can do it. The process is roughly the same.
They also added a bit of internal ink, which is worth just a little more:
> we now also program in some other device attributes, meaning that switching parts of the same size may not work.
Working with vendors in China is entirely adversarial (mostly because their supply chain is vulnerable too), at this scale.
the only reason why pis are not marked this way is because raspberry didn't wanted to (so far)
Replacing a socketed component that is modular by design, even if it's not officially intended to be upgraded outside the factory, is worlds different from replacing BGA components on a densely packed PCB.
That said, there could also be a middle ground by just providing some way to look up the hardware specs of a given serial number. Post the part numbers of the components that you're concerned about being replaced and provide tools to verify as many of them through software as is practical. Allow owners to know if their device has been modified and how so, but allow them to choose what to do with that information.
Combating fraudsters trying to pass off modified and/or refurbished devices as genuine is valid, but preventing owners from modifying or repairing their own or knowingly purchasing such devices from honest resellers is not.
I'm sorry, you seem to be confused. Soldering is not the problem. Locking up the hardware to have hardware provisioned tier limits to block you from upgrading your own hardware is silly.
And do note, raspberry pi doesn't prevent you from switching RAM chips. The board will continue to work just the same with high capacity variants. But for some reason raspberry pi hardcodes a max memory size that prevents you from using the hardware upgrade you paid for in full.
That’s awesome. If it’s economical to do, it’s clearly good for consumers.
> The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts.
That’s clearly on the sellers.
> When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation
That’s a bit of a conjecture and easily solved in ways that preserve user freedom.
They don't need the resellers help for that! I've already been burned twice thinking "I'll use a raspberry pi for this small project" and having it die within a month because reliably reading/writing to an SD card is hard or something.
Between the notorious unreliability, crazy price hikes, trademark or whatever disputes, and this anti consumer ewaste generating policy, I can't think of any reason I'd ever patronize them again.. my only regret is it took me two purchases to learn this lesson!
The person in the forum thread claimed to be repairing CM5s and CM4s. Unusual but it seems like an otherwise hyper reactive response by the RPi Foundation. Something you wouldn’t batt an eye at if it were Apple instead.
Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it".
[0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.
But if this is the real concern, they could just display the fact that "Unoriginal RAM detected" to inform the user its not a vanilla RPi Foundation product, so buyers understand the situation, but continue booting normally.
Every board sold would have been an extra user, the reseller isn't adding full users (although they may increase the indirect customer base!), so even gaining a user through a reseller increases the amortization divider for the support burden.
Now lets consider RAM chip support burden, the original Pi RAM chips can have issues generating support burden, and so can the reseller RAM chips. Unless RP foundation refuses to upstream link training / RAM bringup patches from resellers, there is no real additional support burden.
In fact if RP were a little more creative, they could have tried contacting the resellers to explain they can continue their modding business as long as they advertise it clearly as modified, and to inform them they will be receiving units that didn't pass the RAM tests from the automated lines, since they're going to desolder the chips anyway, this can save costs for RP foundation.
in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup.
Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway.
Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions.
But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer.
Inaction is not permission.
Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult.
There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
> Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult.
I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like.
Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility?
Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks?
So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base.
> There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.
That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do.
There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.
Between current inaction and eventual action, it settles the position of RP foundation, so they can't switch back and forth between "these people are circumventing security" vs "its just an unintended incompatibility", as long as they don't reveal their position its neither here nor there.
I doubt antitrust would get anywhere on this RAM issue, but antitrust law is not defined in terms of either of those categories.
https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick
Pepperidge Farm remembers the FTDI driver bricking.
https://www.eurogamer.net/3ds-flashcard-includes-secret-kill...
If someone gets updated in the wild (like this person did without realizing they had a counterfeit board), they'll fail to boot.
Instead we get restrictions on all users because some users buy stuff from random marketplaces online?
I don't know why you're suggesting the fix is that they offer support for 3rd modded RAM.
> When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi
It's not their problem then, the seller is responsible for it and I think we can assume the user has a brain so they knew they could buy a more expensive option from the authorized sellers. Isn't this the case?
Dangerous assumption there. I'm not just being cynical, that is decades of experience speaking.
In short, someone at NVIDIA really hates retail, but loves Chinese sanction busters.
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2010/microsd-card-failure...
One that I have seen is HMAC(serial||SKU) as a datamatrix/QR, laser-etched onto the top silkscreen and burned into a PROM.
You can already check whether the RAM has been swapped via https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr....
What the fuck are they talking about?
What fraud are you speaking of?
1: I think people should be able to replace chips on an RPi as they desire, so I don't love that they're actively preventing this
2: As a buyer, I absolutely want to know if I'm buying an RPi that has had chips replaced
3: A shady seller changing the SKU to mimic a better board after changing chips is just flat out fraud.
---
It's the classic "Mattress tag" case - it should be illegal to remove as a seller, and fine as the final customer.
But that's really hard to functionally enforce.
It's unfortunate, but given that there are so many ways you could end up with a poor quality knock-off (i.e. Amazon, sorry, 'third party marketplaces') it's probably something that skews the tradeoff quite significantly.
I guess there are more individuals who will be upset when they can't run something on their equipment as it was advertised to them than will be upset that they can't re-solder the RAM.
There are probably even fewer individuals who'll do due diligence in their own supply chain. Whilst those that suffer are technically suffering from some kind of crime / civil wrong - the chance of them getting a remedy for this is going to be non-existent.
Don't fall for it.
You're framing this as if no reputable vendor is willing or able to source cheaper parts.
If they can get a better deal in more RAM, why can't they upgrade the boards? As a consumer, doesn't that benefit you as well?
> Which in this climate is highly probably faulty memory, (...)
That's specious reasoning and blatant fear-mongering. Consumer protection laws require vendors to support their products. If RAM is faulty, whether it was hand soldered by Eben Upton himself or hacked from a Soviet fridge, vendors are compelled to support customers. This means vendors ultimately have an interest in minimizing faulty equipment, because it hurts their bottom line.
So why can't people have the right to upgrade their hardware? I thought we already went through this battle in the 1980s.
Sure - if that vendor was proposing a solution, a modified EEPROM perhaps, then all is dandy. But they aren’t.
I wouldn't mind buying a 16GB board even though the official models at most ship with 8gb.
I'd even wouldn't mind buying the kit and taking a stab at resoldering it myself.
I mean, think about it. what is the whole point of a raspberry pi?
Even if you might not, why would your opinion prevent others from doing what they want with their hardware?
You can still solder your own 16GB and you can do your own support.
Maybe if the Rasp Pi was an unassembled kit "the whole point" would make sense.
You can do what ever you want with your hardware. Have fun. Other people don't have to support you.
If it’s represented as a new product or offered with manufacturer’s warranty, that would cross into fraud.
Only as far as new vs refurbished goes.
But that's not the problem being addressed, is it? I mean, why can't I upgrade it myself?
Just like the idea that you “can’t” rip a Blu-ray Disc was only a matter of time and energy to thwart.
I also don’t think this device is one that has ever been sold with the expectation that it would be upgraded. It is (or was) a cheap single board computer.
Like it’s kind of funny to me how this is becoming a controversy among people who probably didn’t even think raspberry pi memory could be replaced in any semblance of an economically sensible way as of yesterday.
A unit that rpi themselves sold with 8g is different than a unit that someone else modified. The reworked unit is not sold with the disclosure that it has been hacked and no longer covered by any warranty, and the memory installed is of totally unknown provenance and quality, timing specs, failed qa, etc. Even the simple process of heating everything up to desolder & resolder temps is not free, it degrades everything, the pcb itself, the epoxy holding the traces and pads down, and all the components, and means higher chance of some failure happening sooner than it would have. But it's sold as a real rpi unit for real rpi price or a little less to beat real ones.
That is the fraud they speak of.
You should be free to do this to your unit if you like of course, and rpi has infinite other possible ways they could have chosen to address the problem and didn't have to do it this way. I'm only saying there is actually a problem.
In what way this is fraudulent if device works as described?
No different than upgrading a PC and then selling it. You don't call it fraud.
If someone sells RPi with 16GB and the RAM is working fine, then why would that be fraud?
If someone buys e.g. Dell PC, then adds 16GB of ram and sells it at 32GB without mentioning they put extra 16GB, is it a fraud?
That's ridiculous.
If RMA process includes hardware verification then rpi doesn’t get bled out by absorbing the cost of “counterfeits”
If they widely tell people what the market is doing and make all the tools public, they will offload the work of dealing with counterfeits while levelling up the tinkerers
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 tinkering with some Qualcomm boards from Radxa and things are slightly better there, though you don't have anywhere near the ecosystem you get with Pi (or onboarding niceties).
If the reply was along the lines of "This is a new firmware check to curb fraud related to undisclosed aftermarket RAM upgrades with potentially unreliable chips." - I'd be fine with it, but basically just coming out to gaslight the user about the issue leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. In the end, they had to come clean anyway, big surprise.
I say this as someone who has been loving Pis despite their price for the straightforward and reliable long-term software support. Not gonna pretent like I'll never buy a Pi again, but it's another strike moving me to explore other options in the future.
Yes they knew everything about how training DDR4 RAM works, they knew everything including that the seller doesn't know how their training code works and bailed out and no longer exists but still got paid and that it was worth it for the reseller.
I do feel for them; they're between a rock and a hard place with mis-labeled clone boards. But their implementation seems to be the most hostile and opaque possible way to achieve these goals (which I also understand from an anti-cloning standpoint, but especially anymore, it's going to get reversed anyway).
It's pretty normal for the first port of call / warranty claim for a busted item to be the dealer that sold it to you.
Remember when FTDI did this and suddenly medical equipment at some hospital stopped working?
Sad to see industry pioneers lose to players that copy them and undercut prices using cheap labor.
Its called competition. Should those „cheap labourers“ not have a job?
Any sellers caught doing this would quickly be flagged by the community as unreliable; also purchase protection is pretty strong these days.