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And that's why I moved over to MMC based Pi clones (specifically the Rock64), I am overly tired of SD cards mysteriously corrupting themselves. As of yet, I hav

And that's why I moved over to MMC based Pi clones (specifically the Rock64), I am overly tired of SD cards mysteriously corrupting themselves. As of yet, I haven't had an MMC go upside down, but that's certainly far from guaranteed as well.

zwieback 8y ago
Do you know how much of that is due to connector and signal paths? I worked on a design that had soldered on eMMC and it was rock solid (and 8 bit wide) but I always assumed SD problems were due more to the flaky form factor. Is there a standard for removable eMMC modules?
- dbuder 8y ago
  Yes it's like one of those double row press fit connectors usually used for displays in phones that fit better than they look like they will. If you are soldering in your first question is why am I using eMMC. SBC computers are a good use case for it imo.
copperx 8y ago
Is it possible for the rPi to boot from a USB device? One solution would be to hook it up to a $20 32GB SSD drive instead of relying on an SD card.
- wolrah 8y ago
  Depends on the model, or actually technically it depends on the bootcode but which version is preloaded depends on the model. The brand new Pi 3B+ ships with the latest bootcode and will boot from USB mass storage or PXE by default. Their PXE is a bit nonstandard but it's close enough that anyone who's PXE booted a PC will understand it. The older Pi 3 supports USB and PXE booting, but has those modes disabled by default. There's a bit you can set in one-time programmable memory to enable it permanently. PXE booting has some quirks in this mode and doesn't get along with switches that take more than a second or so to activate ports. Earlier models do not support anything but SD on their stock bootcode. In all cases, a SD card containing nothing but the latest bootcode can be inserted which brings the new features to the older models, allowing them to boot the rest of the OS from whatever.
- ygra 8y ago
  At least for the older models you still needed the card, but only for a marker that tells the Pi to boot from USB. I've been using that setup with Kodi/OSMC with a Pi 2 since USB is faster than the SD card.

zwieback 8y ago

Do you know how much of that is due to connector and signal paths? I worked on a design that had soldered on eMMC and it was rock solid (and 8 bit wide) but I always assumed SD problems were due more to the flaky form factor. Is there a standard for removable eMMC modules?

dbuder 8y ago
Yes it's like one of those double row press fit connectors usually used for displays in phones that fit better than they look like they will. If you are soldering in your first question is why am I using eMMC. SBC computers are a good use case for it imo.

copperx 8y ago

Is it possible for the rPi to boot from a USB device? One solution would be to hook it up to a $20 32GB SSD drive instead of relying on an SD card.

wolrah 8y ago
Depends on the model, or actually technically it depends on the bootcode but which version is preloaded depends on the model. The brand new Pi 3B+ ships with the latest bootcode and will boot from USB mass storage or PXE by default. Their PXE is a bit nonstandard but it's close enough that anyone who's PXE booted a PC will understand it. The older Pi 3 supports USB and PXE booting, but has those modes disabled by default. There's a bit you can set in one-time programmable memory to enable it permanently. PXE booting has some quirks in this mode and doesn't get along with switches that take more than a second or so to activate ports. Earlier models do not support anything but SD on their stock bootcode. In all cases, a SD card containing nothing but the latest bootcode can be inserted which brings the new features to the older models, allowing them to boot the rest of the OS from whatever.
ygra 8y ago
At least for the older models you still needed the card, but only for a marker that tells the Pi to boot from USB. I've been using that setup with Kodi/OSMC with a Pi 2 since USB is faster than the SD card.