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Except that they have to deal with angry people who bought a dodgy chipped unit. Yeah it's stupid, but people doesn't know better, they'll complain loudly Rasp

Except that they have to deal with angry people who bought a dodgy chipped unit. Yeah it's stupid, but people doesn't know better, they'll complain loudly Raspberry PI is sh* it doesn't work and the Pi Foundation are scammers. I can understand why they don't want that.

pmontra 11d ago
Replacing a part voids warranty, this is common and well understood by everybody. I can't help thinking that they want to sell maxed out devices to max out margin.
- alibarber 11d ago
  In the GitHub issue posted as another comment it's clear that what has happened is: - 8GB Pi is out of stock / too expensive - due to RAM shortage - Someone bought a load of non-8GB Pis - Replaced the RAM with whatever they could get their hands on (cheap enough to be worth the hassle, cheap because no one else wants it even given the ongoing shortage - so probably pretty suspicious / of dubious quality) - The end user buys it and has no idea it has been modified and the warranty is void - RPi probably don't want to spend their time supporting it. Probably can't if the memory is a load of crap, even if they wanted to. It gets bricked. The point here is someone bought something else (a fake pi) than they thought they were getting. Not that someone willingly wanted to go hacking.
  - ryandrake 11d ago
    It's not Pi's responsibility to police what people do with devices after the devices are sold. If bootleggers are modifying the devices and reselling fraudulent versions, that's between the buyer and the bootlegger and marketplace site where the second transaction happened.
functionmouse 11d ago
this is such a lousy excuse
Brian_K_White 11d ago
Why they want or don't want something doesn't matter at all. There is always a reason someone does any bad thing. There is always obviously some advantage to the perpetrator. The fact they are only reacting to some other bad actions doesn't excuse it because there are any number of ways to to react. This way is the one way they chose when they have infinity to choose from.
dsr_ 11d ago
They could permanently mark the board when they install the RAM on it. Since, presumably, nobody would try to sell a board with less RAM on it than shipped, a count-down scheme instead of count-up would work. 16GB board: no holes drilled in a marked area; 8GB: one hole drilled; 4GB: two holes drilled; 2GB: three holes drilled.
- Aurornis 11d ago
  These things don’t matter to buyers. When the board doesn’t work right or crashes a lot they don’t care which step in their personal supply chain is at fault. They demand the original manufacturer give them a new one for free, which they believe is the terms of the warranty.
- throwaway85825 11d ago
  That would be the honest way to do it.
IshKebab 11d ago
I seriously doubt that is any more than a theoretical problem, and even if it isn't, so what? People start a warranty claim, send the boards to RPi, they run diagnostics, detect the changed RAM and deny the claim.
- jamesh98 11d ago
  [dead]
adolph 11d ago
What a world we live in that hot air reworking RAM on a SBC makes any sense. I can kind of understand shanzhai GPUs to get around export restrictions, but RPis?
- paleotrope 11d ago
  I would agree except we still live in a world where making a few dollars more a day is a perfectly valid way to make money in alot of places. A bunch of guys in some electronic sweatshop in Vietnam or Indonesia working on pis is a reality.
- saturn8601 11d ago
  Maybe your frame of reference is wrong. It makes perfect sense when you have a society with overproduction of people with STEM skills, overcapacity in manufacturing, and has ~18-20% youth unemployment.

pmontra 11d ago

Replacing a part voids warranty, this is common and well understood by everybody. I can't help thinking that they want to sell maxed out devices to max out margin.

alibarber 11d ago
In the GitHub issue posted as another comment it's clear that what has happened is: - 8GB Pi is out of stock / too expensive - due to RAM shortage - Someone bought a load of non-8GB Pis - Replaced the RAM with whatever they could get their hands on (cheap enough to be worth the hassle, cheap because no one else wants it even given the ongoing shortage - so probably pretty suspicious / of dubious quality) - The end user buys it and has no idea it has been modified and the warranty is void - RPi probably don't want to spend their time supporting it. Probably can't if the memory is a load of crap, even if they wanted to. It gets bricked. The point here is someone bought something else (a fake pi) than they thought they were getting. Not that someone willingly wanted to go hacking.
- ryandrake 11d ago
  It's not Pi's responsibility to police what people do with devices after the devices are sold. If bootleggers are modifying the devices and reselling fraudulent versions, that's between the buyer and the bootlegger and marketplace site where the second transaction happened.

functionmouse 11d ago

this is such a lousy excuse

Brian_K_White 11d ago

Why they want or don't want something doesn't matter at all. There is always a reason someone does any bad thing. There is always obviously some advantage to the perpetrator. The fact they are only reacting to some other bad actions doesn't excuse it because there are any number of ways to to react. This way is the one way they chose when they have infinity to choose from.

dsr_ 11d ago

They could permanently mark the board when they install the RAM on it. Since, presumably, nobody would try to sell a board with less RAM on it than shipped, a count-down scheme instead of count-up would work. 16GB board: no holes drilled in a marked area; 8GB: one hole drilled; 4GB: two holes drilled; 2GB: three holes drilled.

Aurornis 11d ago
These things don’t matter to buyers. When the board doesn’t work right or crashes a lot they don’t care which step in their personal supply chain is at fault. They demand the original manufacturer give them a new one for free, which they believe is the terms of the warranty.
throwaway85825 11d ago
That would be the honest way to do it.

IshKebab 11d ago

I seriously doubt that is any more than a theoretical problem, and even if it isn't, so what? People start a warranty claim, send the boards to RPi, they run diagnostics, detect the changed RAM and deny the claim.

jamesh98 11d ago
[dead]

adolph 11d ago

What a world we live in that hot air reworking RAM on a SBC makes any sense. I can kind of understand shanzhai GPUs to get around export restrictions, but RPis?

paleotrope 11d ago
I would agree except we still live in a world where making a few dollars more a day is a perfectly valid way to make money in alot of places. A bunch of guys in some electronic sweatshop in Vietnam or Indonesia working on pis is a reality.
saturn8601 11d ago
Maybe your frame of reference is wrong. It makes perfect sense when you have a society with overproduction of people with STEM skills, overcapacity in manufacturing, and has ~18-20% youth unemployment.