RG1 1.8v regulator

As shown in Troy Mackay's post on Jul 28 it seems to me that we could mod our PI's to work more as the chips were designed.

I think that this could make the PI more stable, from the looks of it.

I am not a designer Just an old tech, but I think we need to find a way to FIX what we now know is an error in the board.

So could someone do some practical testing to see if there is something that can be done to easly fix the current board, rather than wait for RPI foundation to fix it by waiting for a board redesign?

i will love to try out the hack Troy mackay has done also and then test again with that fix on the board, but i have looked into this and i most say it is very well done by Troy as i think it is to small for me todo and i done have an microscope as need for this.

so yes if some one can findout where to make an cut to split the LAN9512 1v8 from the lod 1v8 then i will try this also.

Tooms

jamodio wrote:

 

You can theorize and overanalyze what should happen if you put some extra load on those pins, well, if a car wasn't designed to fly, don't insist making it fly...

+1

There's a reason why engineers devise circuit blocks like LDOs, both conceptual and implemented, and the reason is so that you can black-box functionality and hence ride on the shoulders of giants, instead of crawling along on the ground reinventing everything.  If you break a black box, the giant evaporates and you land on your ass.

Connecting two LDOs in parallel has that effect.  All bets are off.

Fortunately, it doesn't need discussing, as Pete acknowledges the issue.  The only question is what happens now.  As usual RPF is completely opaque on that.

Morgaine.

There are several reasons to keep documentation hidden:

• Part of the design isn't yours and you simply don't have the rights to release any docs.

As a couple of others have commented, various bits probably got bought-in or imported from a design library. So you may not have the docs or may be contractually bound not to disclose them. I'd take a guess that there's all sorts of stuff like that for the reasons Morgaine mentions - and it all comes back to money. Why employ an engineer who understands the inner workings of an LDO when you can simply buy in a cheap design pattern with no knowledge required.

It's not like I'm any different, I'll happily use a chip when I have no real idea how it works as long as there's just enough docs to let me accomplish my goal.

Using black boxes is good, not bad!  Without it we'd still be scratching on cave walls instead of landing 1-ton rovers on Mars.  But those black boxes must be respected, and not compromized by using them out-of-spec.

The giants can evaporate very easily.

The giants can evaporate very easily.

Yes, and that's a risk that never seems to get factored in.  Sooner or later the original designers of the black box have left the company, died, and the knowledge has been lost.

What's then the cost to re-engineer that black box from zero when other reasons demand a change of spec ?

selsinork wrote:

 

The giants can evaporate very easily.

Yes, and that's a risk that never seems to get factored in.  Sooner or later the original designers of the black box have left the company, died, and the knowledge has been lost.

The answer is very simple, yet it is almost always dismissed out of hand by those who look only inwards and lack a global perspective:

Mankind's advances need to be fully open, so that nothing is lost.  Period.

The amount of wasted effort today is just beyond comprehension, as people compete instead of cooperate.  I don't know how one could even begin to quantify the waste, but I very much doubt that more than 1% of Mankind's effort is retained over time and leads to the advance of civilization.  More likely it's 0.001%.  Certainly the vast bulk of all commercial software effort is totally lost to humanity, all those millions of man-years down the drain as soon as software is EOL'd.

It's very sad when you sit back and think about it philosophically.  Technical progress could be running thousands or millions of times as fast as it is today if the fruits of all effort were open rather than zealously protected and then lost.  It's scary to think where we would be today.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

The amount of wasted effort today is just beyond comprehension, as people compete instead of cooperate.  I don't know how one could even begin to quantify the waste, but I very much doubt that more than 1% of Mankind's effort is retained over time and leads to the advance of civilization.  More likely it's 0.001%.  Certainly the vast bulk of all commercial software effort is totally lost to humanity, all those millions of man-years down the drain as soon as software is EOL'd.

 

It's very sad when you sit back and think about it philosophically.  Technical progress could be running thousands or millions of times as fast as it is today if the fruits of all effort were open rather than zealously protected and then lost.  It's scary to think where we would be today.

OTOH, philosophical progress must keep up with technological progress or mankind can build the tools to destroy itself without developing the wisdom to avoid doing so.  We seem to have dodged the bullet (for now) regarding nuclear self-annihilation, but climate change could easily do the job instead.

John Beetem wrote:

 

developing the wisdom

Not a chance, if you're referring to humans.  It hasn't happened over the few millennia of what we recognize as "civilization", and there's no sign of any change whatsoever now.

It's only our technological capability that progresses, not Homo sapiens itself --- natural evolution is simply not fast enough.  The only way the leading species on the planet will "develop the wisdom" is by integrating with our machinery and in due course leaving Homo Sapiens and its self-destructive grey matter behind.

That possibility is pure speculation, alas.  There is no guarantee that our mental activity can be integrated with machinery even with full control of everything down to atomic level, so the future may unfortunately be either/or, rather than a slow evolution from our unwise past into a logical future.

Morgaine.

There's a report today of a guy who thinks there is a correlation

between hot chips and ethernet cutting out and keyboard repeats.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=14478

"Mine gets pretty hot. Heat I don't mind, but when it does get hot,

the ethernet cuts out and the keyboard repeats happen more often."

I see that mahjongg has become an apologist now, and doesn't even realize when he's teaching Grandma to suck eggs.  Sad.  I guess the fanboi disease over there is contagious.

The Foundation has already found the reason for dropped USB events.  No further speculation is needed.

Thomas Johansen wrote:

 

Troy Mackay wrote:

 

Tooms wrote:

 

i will love to try out the hack Troy mackay has done also and then test again with that fix on the board, but i have looked into this and i most say it is very well done by Troy as i think it is to small for me todo and i done have an microscope as need for this.

 

so yes if some one can findout where to make an cut to split the LAN9512 1v8 from the lod 1v8 then i will try this also.

 

 

Tooms

The microsope is really handy (and didn't cost me a cent), you'd be surprised what you can do when you can see what it is you are doing. I haven't even done a lot of SMD work. I'd love one of those IR cameras though... They'd be a bit harder to find in someones junk bin.

 

Hi

 

yes i am only having an magnifying lamp the glass ones with 40 leds and it is not very good so i have been missing this for an long time..

 

I ask my local hacker space if they hade an good microscope but they only got an older fix one, have not seen it.. so i have now my own microscope on the way and hope it will be here in 7 days time and then i can try do the hack you have done..

 

I can see you only have split the VDD1V8CORE but what about the other VDD1V8ETH and VDD1V8USB ?

 

 

Tooms

Hi

hmmm replying on my own posts..

But i am getting (i hope ) an microscope to the coming weeking and then i will try to do the hack Troy mackay and then do some more testing to see if this fix the heat of the LAN9512 and to see how low the power the RPI can run from as i like to do an project where it is running from an battery so if i can save 30-40% in power use by do this hack and replace the LDO then it will be good.

Just hope they soon will make an fixed rev. of the board so i can buy more boards with out this error.

Tooms

Thomas Johansen wrote:

 

Troy Mackay wrote:

 

Tooms wrote:

 

i will love to try out the hack Troy mackay has done also and then test again with that fix on the board, but i have looked into this and i most say it is very well done by Troy as i think it is to small for me todo and i done have an microscope as need for this.

 

so yes if some one can findout where to make an cut to split the LAN9512 1v8 from the lod 1v8 then i will try this also.

 

 

Tooms

The microsope is really handy (and didn't cost me a cent), you'd be surprised what you can do when you can see what it is you are doing. I haven't even done a lot of SMD work. I'd love one of those IR cameras though... They'd be a bit harder to find in someones junk bin.

 

Hi

 

yes i am only having an magnifying lamp the glass ones with 40 leds and it is not very good so i have been missing this for an long time..

 

I ask my local hacker space if they hade an good microscope but they only got an older fix one, have not seen it.. so i have now my own microscope on the way and hope it will be here in 7 days time and then i can try do the hack you have done..

 

I can see you only have split the VDD1V8CORE but what about the other VDD1V8ETH and VDD1V8USB ?

 

 

Tooms

Hi

hmmm replying on my own posts..

But i am getting (i hope ) an microscope to the coming weeking and then i will try to do the hack Troy mackay and then do some more testing to see if this fix the heat of the LAN9512 and to see how low the power the RPI can run from as i like to do an project where it is running from an battery so if i can save 30-40% in power use by do this hack and replace the LDO then it will be good.

Just hope they soon will make an fixed rev. of the board so i can buy more boards with out this error.

Tooms