Hynix RAM 512MB

Well... There is two ways to look at this situation.

1.  Why are the distrubuters using a part that is affecting compadibility?

2.  Why aren’t people updating their software with a new device?  Isn’t obvious that if you are running old software on a new device it (most likely) won’t work.  People should be getting a new image every time it is released anyway, especially with the state that the raspberry pi’s software is at the moment.  This is nothing different to people using a new computer - you must update your software!!!

Thing is, I have seen a lot of problems in the forums where people had bought a package from either Farnellor CPC, Maplin etc that included a card with a pre-written image. My normal suggestion in these circumstances was to re-flash the card and pretty much all the time it worked again. I made the erroneous assumption that the post office must be nuking the cards somehow, but it would now appear to be for the reasons posted here.

I can't imagine any of the big distributors constantly updating the bundled SD cards they are selling, and I think it is unfair to expect a person who has paid a premium for a card with an image on it, to have to go through that process themselves.

I also am a little confused as to why a semi-incompatible part is being used.

Steve

> I also am a little confused as to why a semi-incompatible part is being used.

Apparently the firmware, which is part of the binary blob loaded from the SD card,

interrogates the RAM chip to find it's type, and initializes it differently depending

on the type.  If an unrecognized RAM type is found, then booting fails.  No error

message is displayed to the user, because booting hasn't gotten far enough.

Perhaps LEDs could be used to indicate the failure reason, but that isn't done.

On a typical PC, this firmware would be in a nonvolatile memory chip attached

to the motherboard, rather than included with a downloaded OS image, so there

would be much less chance that an older OS image would fail to work with a

newer RAM chip.

The firmware was apparently updated on github on January 16, and there was

apparently a warning on the rpi download page earlier this month, but as of

today, I don't see any warning on either the rpi or element14 download pages,

and it looks to me that the element14 download images all predate the firmware update.

Better communication would certainly be helpful when hardware changes are made

that are incompatible with previous OS downloads.

coder27 wrote:

Better communication would certainly be helpful when hardware changes are made

that are incompatible with previous OS downloads.

As well all know, the Foundation are normally so good at clear communication and never resort to obfuscation

I really don't think it is acceptable that the answer for everything seems to be re-image, a lot of people have spent time getting builds just as they want them. It would appear you can just put on a new start.elf, but how many people will truly know how to do that ?

I think there should be a prominent message on the downloads page and also a slip of paper in any new Pi's sent out, just to make things that little bit easier?

Steve

Cian,

> 2.  Why aren’t people updating their software with a new device?  Isn’t obvious that if you are running old software on a new device it (most likely) won’t work.

In hindsight it may be obvious, but it wasn't obvious to anyone at the time

when users were reporting booting problems, even when they noted that they

were using Hynix RAM.  For example, on this thread:

  http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=36194

when Hynix RAM was specifically noted as a potential factor in booting problems,

the only advise given was:

"Raspberry's with Hynix or Samsung RAM is most likely not the issue.

All Raspberry's should run the same images on all SD cards.  ...

Have you tested your Raspberry with your friends power supply and SD Card?

And with his peripheral devices? In his network? This excludes all other causes.

If you've done that and it still doesn't work, you can be sure that you Raspberry broken."

I think a lot of people have experience replacing or adding memory to a PC

or laptop, with no worries about needing to update their OS or firmware.

One of the selling points of the RPi is that a student can buy their own RPi

to use at home with the same software used in the classroom.  But now we

learn that the classroom SD card might not work on the home machine if the home

machine has a newer RAM type.

coder27 wrote:

 

One of the selling points of the RPi is that a student can buy their own RPi

to use at home with the same software used in the classroom.  But now we

learn that the classroom SD card might not work on the home machine if the home

machine has a newer RAM type.

Are the RasPi boards and software still at the "developer" stage?  (1 million developers and counting !)  If so, there's a certain expectation that software is still evolving rapidly and glitches should be expected.  I don't think we've reached the "educational release" yet.

It sounds like the Hynix issue is simply forgetting to announce an important technical issue.  Each firmware release should have "release notes" covering the most important changes, but it takes time to write release notes and they need to be posted at a prominent place in the RasPi Wiki.  If you know where they are, let us know.

> Are the RasPi boards and software still at the "developer" stage?

That's a very good question.  It seems the answer depends.  If you look at the

RPi main blog, just about all you see is how it is being used, with essentially

nothing about how the development is going, and so you could easily get the impression

that the device has exited the "developer" stage.  But if you read the forums, just

about all you see is complaints about various problems, including really fundamental

problems like keyboards not working and problems booting, so from that you could

easily get the impression that the device is still in development.

I think it's interesting that the Hynix announcement yesterday on the main page was

under the headline of "Public Service Announcement", as if to say we appologize for

interrupting your regular stream of non-developmental news stories with a developmental

news story.

I have never seen a clear explanation of what the "educational release" would contain,

except that it would be cased, and certified for residential FCC/CE compliance, and

probably contain some 3rd party educational materials.  The RPi FAQ mentions the

educational release only in response to a question about cases.

> It sounds like the Hynix issue is simply forgetting to announce an important technical issue.

I disagree with "forgot".   There is no forum for announcing important technical issues,

or for keeping users informed about what problems are being worked.   It appears to me

that the technical announcement on the main blog was only made after the unnamed

distributor got fed up with all the returns.  Users would *love* to know what progress is

being made on technical issues such as USB problems and X11 acceleration, but there

is no such forum.

> If you know where they [release notes] are, let us know.

As far as I know, there are no release notes supplied with OS and/or firmware updates.

I don't consider the foundation members to be lazy, nor to be oblivious to the usefulness

of release notes, so this appears to me to be deliberate.

Edited to add: 

Earlier this month there was an announcment on the RPi download page that the RISCOS

download (I believe) was out-of-date.  That announcement has since been removed, which

indicates to me that it wasn't a matter of "forgetting" to make an announcement.