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Raspberry Pi Foundation failing to communicate their development of this stepping will results in tens of thousands recently bought A2-stepping devices ending u

Raspberry Pi Foundation failing to communicate their development of this stepping will results in tens of thousands recently bought A2-stepping devices ending up in the landfill.

mschuster91 1y ago
Why? The errata are known, designs have workarounds that can be kept. There's no reason to not install the old stock.
scottlamb 1y ago
IMHO, the issue [edit: once understood/documented] was overhyped. From browsing blogs/forums you'd think the chip was completely useless. But many uses of the chip didn't run into the problem, and others could be solved with external resistors. Even https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer eventually found a nice RP2350 design. I think they didn't preannounce because it could have taken longer than expected and people would have held orders in the meantime, which could have been a problem. [1] Although they did do this a little bit: > Eventually all Pico 2 products will use the A4 stepping. While the A3 stepping will not be made available to silicon customers, approximately 30,000 units of A3 inventory will be used to build Pico 2 and Pico 2 W products. ~~I'm hesistant to buy a Pico 2 or Pico 2 W right now because I might get this weird stepping that could have issues almost no one else ever sees.~~ [edit: not so much after seeing phire's comment and the bootrom-only changes in the datasheet.] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
- phire 1y ago
  It's all documented in the updated datasheet (see Appendix C) All the hardware changes and most of the bootrom changes went into A3. A4 is only a minor bootrom update. The chance of an A3-only errata is tiny.
  - scottlamb 1y ago
    Thanks! I should have looked there first. I feel better about buying a board with an A3 after seeing that.
Aurornis 1y ago
The number of people worried about the errata is much larger than the number of people actually impacted by it. The errata has been known for a long time.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Raspberry Pi Foundation failing to communicate their development of this stepping will results in tens of thousands recently bought A2-stepping devices ending up in the landfill.

mschuster91 1y ago

Why? The errata are known, designs have workarounds that can be kept. There's no reason to not install the old stock.

scottlamb 1y ago

IMHO, the issue [edit: once understood/documented] was overhyped. From browsing blogs/forums you'd think the chip was completely useless. But many uses of the chip didn't run into the problem, and others could be solved with external resistors. Even https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer eventually found a nice RP2350 design. I think they didn't preannounce because it could have taken longer than expected and people would have held orders in the meantime, which could have been a problem. [1] Although they did do this a little bit: > Eventually all Pico 2 products will use the A4 stepping. While the A3 stepping will not be made available to silicon customers, approximately 30,000 units of A3 inventory will be used to build Pico 2 and Pico 2 W products. ~~I'm hesistant to buy a Pico 2 or Pico 2 W right now because I might get this weird stepping that could have issues almost no one else ever sees.~~ [edit: not so much after seeing phire's comment and the bootrom-only changes in the datasheet.] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

phire 1y ago
It's all documented in the updated datasheet (see Appendix C) All the hardware changes and most of the bootrom changes went into A3. A4 is only a minor bootrom update. The chance of an A3-only errata is tiny.
- scottlamb 1y ago
  Thanks! I should have looked there first. I feel better about buying a board with an A3 after seeing that.

Aurornis 1y ago

The number of people worried about the errata is much larger than the number of people actually impacted by it. The errata has been known for a long time.

deleted 1y ago

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