Technology

the measure is primarily intended to prevent third parties from buying lower-capacity boards, replacing their RAM with cheaper parts of uncertain origin and then reselling the modified hardware as a higher-capacity model. The company argues that such modified boards have not undergone its validation process and could subsequently generate support requests if unstable memory is blamed on the company.

The solution to this decidedly rare problem is authorized resellers, not an arbitrary block on a very technically demanding upgrade.

That's assuming this is the actual problem though. If the problem is actually "We want to make more money by charging extra for 'enthusiast models'" then this is the correct tactic to ensure that you aren't undercut by cheap labor.

So do we own the pi that we bought or does Raspberry Pi?

The behaviour is particularly interesting because physically replacing the memory on a Raspberry Pi is already well outside the scope of an ordinary upgrade.

I mean... aren't hackers the target audience for Raspberry Pis?

Yeah, if the reasoning they give isn't just straight bullshit, then I guess I don't want to see them drown in support tickets. But it also seems like this move runs pretty counter to the whole point of the Raspberry Pi.

(Plus, can't resellers buy 2GB models, redo some of the screen printing, and sell them as 8GB models without even trying to upgrade the RAM to 8GB? That seems at least as bad as getting a Raspberry Pi with a dodgy 8GB RAM chip.)

I can't solder to save my life, but this still makes me take them off the list for potential future boards.

Granted, I prerfer RISC-V where posible, but a few things still need ARM.

Now I need to look around for a alternative to two Pi5s, the Pi4, and Pi Zero that were on my list.