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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

I'm rather curious, why can't the RPi have soldered flash memory? How much would it cost to add 2, 4, or 8GB of flash memory on it? Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars.

I'm suspecting it would require for them to make a new SOC, breaking compability?

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>>Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars.

That's the problem with the entire RPi ecosystem - there's a lot of things people want "even if it only adds another few dollars". Another ethernet, proper m.2 port, better audio, so-dimm slot etc etc etc....

The Rpi is meant to be cheap. Yes it means that it might not include the feature that you want. And no, "just making it a little bit more expensive" is not the solution here. It's already gotten way too expensive for what is was meant to be originally.

And if you really want a Pi with built in flash, then the compute module has that:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-4/?varia...

You can have this today. Raspberry Pi sells the wonderful Compute Module 4 with the normal Pi CPU on it, and it optionally comes with built in EMMC memory. You can plop it on a carrier that gives it a normal raspberry pi form factor. I use the CM4 in my projects and it’s lovely.

Sorry these are two different distributors, but the CM4 is hard to find right now and the PiTray mini is cool, just couldn’t find them at the same place. PiTray mini is also at Digi-Key I think.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Raspberry-Pi-Compute-Module-CM41...

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2196.html

Using an SD card means you can reset the Pi to factory settings by swapping the card for another; and undo the reset by swapping the cards back.

This is substantially simpler for beginners than using network boot, or messing around with a bootloader via serial console.

Additionally, as split root storage setup because the boot partition is small is a lot more complicated than simply buying a 64GB+ sd card and (usually) have no storage problems.

Having an 8GB eMMC does not preclude having an SD slot. Any beginner can plug in an auto-installer on the SD card and use the same SD for different devices. Simpler and cheaper.

If that's not enough, the eMMC could even come preinstalled with an OS.

Having soldered eMMC also means that you have complicated the effort required to securely wipe the device. It doesn’t get any easier than ejecting an SD card.

Compute module has eMMC, and they haven’t been excessively costly because of it or reportedly unreliable in the way SDs are. But either way I suspect that the Foundation design team has some issues in designing power circuits rather than that SD cards being unfit or people are throwing in cheap ones.

Well, that was the issue with older Pis is that they were running powered by (micro) USB 2.0, which officially tops out at 2.5 W. While IIRC the 3rd Pi tended to top out at trying to draw 15 W - SIX TIMES MORE !!! No wonder that SD cards got destroyed in the process !

But AFAIK this shouldn't be an issue any more (assuming a non-counterfeit charger) with USB-C 3.0 (RPi 4+ ?) which starts at 15 W ?

I don’t know, but they did have brownout issues with 5.0V supplies, reluctance issues or something with official PoE HAT, and I’m not seeing PC-like multi phase MOSFET bridges on Pi to this day. It could be like there is some spike noises or something going into SD and killing it(emphasis on could be, it’s just my hunches).

I'd rather have onboard USB serial. No more trying to find a USB serial cable laying around, or enabling SSH and hunting down the IP address.

It already has the USB port for power, surely they could have gotten Broadcom to include USB serial in the SoC for negligible cost by now?

If your goal is to avoid using an sd card, have you considered a Beaglebone?

Thus tripling the cost of the cheapest Pi - which costs $5.

This is a marketing price, if you buy in bulk it costs $15.

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