That's quite disappointing. Whose hardware is it anyways? Yours, when you pay for it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I find their explanation to be completely reasonable.

As they clearly explained, giving you the choice to swap the RAM chips would create broader systemic problems that would lead to bad customer experiences and a support burden for their organization.

You'd be ok with that trade?

Local maximalists like to imagine a world where everything is aligned with their own personal incentives, but then present this world as being filled with freedom and choices. Just not anyone else's freedom or choices, only their own.

The entire point of the RPi is the user can do whatever they want with it.

So no, it's not reasonable at all.

Buy an Apple product if you want what you're stating.

No, RPis are very inexpensive computers. What you're advocating would considerably increase the price of a Raspberry Pi to pay for the additional support burden (if this is even reasonable--should they hire a bunch of people just to answer "you bought a RPi w/ bootleg RAM" over and over again?), and that defeats the point.

You'd be ok with that trade?

Umm, yes...?

Just put a 'warranty void when removed' frangible sticker on it. Seems to work fine for PCs.

But so many people these days seem to be brainwashed into accepting that computing devices should come with soldered RAM and locked bootloaders, they probably can't even envisage how hardware used to be. Yes, modding my device voided the warranty and I didn't care. Freedom has a cost.

So they applied this gate in the rpi EEPROM, which is closed source.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761

There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts. When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.

could it be construed as anti-competitive to block end-users or resellers from swapping RAM?

No. Price discrimination and locking hardware are not illegal.

You'd be well advised to remember there is a world beyond your visible horizon.

I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of how the world works when responding to questions about legalities.

What you said isn't true for quite a few countries.

That's quite possible, but could you name a couple where locking a raspberry pi type of computer would be illegal?

EU Right to Repair Directive specifically prohibits manufacturers from using HW/SW locks or firmware limits to block part replacement.

lets try proof by exhaustion:

in those jurisdictions where either price discrimination or locking hardware are not illegal, it is typically perfectly legal to reverse engineer for compatibility purposes. So nothing prevents such resellers from upping their game and learning a thing or two about link training and general SDRAM bringup.

Once they have acquired the knowledge legally in such jurisdictions the product just flows in the other jurisdictions anyway.

Courts upheld the monopolistic position of microsoft etc. for decades, but respect has no finality, "re" + "spect" to review, so later such companies were fined for their decades long transgressions.

But during those decades it may appear legal to the average consumer.

Inaction is not permission.

All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective.

Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult.

There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.

All of this is pretty irrelevant from a legal perspective.

Reverse engineering is legal, but manufacturers don’t have to help you figure out how to reverse engineer their products and they’re allowed to design their products in a way that makes it difficult.

I'm not asking for help to figure this out, and of course RP is allowed to shoot themselves in any foot they like.

Consider Europe where such reverse engineering is perfectly legal for compatibility purposes. Let's consider an idealized scenario, there were no security bugs or other issues with the product that would justify reverse engineering RP blobs in public. When they do something like this, they are GIVING CARTE BLANCHE to public reverse engineering efforts to attain compatibility with other RAM chips. Why would you provide legal cover in some jurisdictions for others in publicly reverse engineering your own products by introducing artificial incompatibility?

Also from a consumer perspective, RP tries to place itself front and center in maker communties, emphasizing modularity, not just hobbyists, also companies build and design end products using RP units. All of these companies must now be wondering where RP Foundations exact red line resides: can we resell an RP board in a Kiosk we made? or only for as long as it doesn't compete with RP's future Kiosk modules? Today its the RAM upgrade, but tomorrow RP modules may refuse to boot some popular Kiosk hardware intentionally. What prevents RP Foundation from eventually "not copying" end-application hardware like a Kiosk design from their customers, and then enforcing compatibility only with RP Kiosks?

So not only are they providing legal cover for public reverse engineering efforts, they are scaring part of their customer base.

There’s generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like hardware lockdowns of this nature illegal, especially for companies that are not in regulated industries or are not monopoly/oligopoly players.

That's a very shallow interpretation of law, looking only at what RP is or isn't allowed to do.

There's generally not a lot of jurisdictions out there that make stuff like reverse engineering for compatibility or security applications illegal either.

Probably not.

Doing a RAM swap and then selling the resulting unit as if it were a Raspberry Pi of the higher RAM capacity might be construed as trademark infringement[0]. And in general it's fairly difficult to make arguments in antitrust cases that boil down to "yes, your honor, everything they're doing is within their rights but I don't like it".

[0] At the same time, the scammers could probably get away with this by putting "Upgraded to 16GB!" in the title of their eBay listings or whatever, in the same way that fraudulent storage devices are labeled as "upgraded" (read: lying about their capacity). That doesn't impact the antitrust analysis though.

But bricking retroactively in the field is a bad move, and sends even more anger and RMA requests back towards parties.

https://github.com/therealdreg/ftdibrick

Pepperidge Farm remembers the FTDI driver bricking.

It's not bricked retroactively from what I've read.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761

If someone gets updated in the wild (like this person did without realizing they had a counterfeit board), they'll fail to boot.

Consider that that happened a year ago and this submission may be about the fix.

The "fix" in the thread is just not updating ever again.

The user friendly option would be to print the amount of RAM in very large letters on the PCB. There happens to be a lot of suitable surface on the PCB to the right of the text "Raspberry Pi 5" on the PCB anyway (§). Right now the amount of RAM is hard to read and easy to modify (move a little tiny SMD resistor).

Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM.

Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr...

--

(§) as can be seen here https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...

Mac Minis used to have soldered on SSDs, but the 2024 model is upgradable. A lot of people purchased a cheaper Mac Mini and upgraded the storage themselves. Most people would argue this is a good thing, even if some of those Mac Minis were resold. This is no different.

It absolutely is different. You just said the Mac Mini is upgradable but the Pi is still soldered on. Desoldering and soldering a new RAM unit carries huge risks no matter how skilled people claim they are at it.

Should just print "warranty void on unauthorized RAM", instead of not booting

The real story here is that people are selling modded Pis as higher-memory versions. And this check actually caught them + is circumventable. The restriction is somewhat annoying to a small subset of enthusiasts but seems to catch genuine fraud.

The restriction is somewhat annoying to a small subset of enthusiasts but seems to catch genuine fraud.

What fraud are you speaking of?

The memory that they are placing in it has to be cheap enough to be worth their while. Which in this climate is highly probably faulty memory, or memory that runs at a different speed/spec to the one advertised to come with the RPi. That is fraud.

Yeah, I'm split on this because

1: I think people should be able to replace chips on an RPi as they desire, so I don't love that they're actively preventing this

2: As a buyer, I absolutely want to know if I'm buying an RPi that has had chips replaced

3: A shady seller changing the SKU to mimic a better board after changing chips is just flat out fraud.

---

It's the classic "Mattress tag" case - it should be illegal to remove as a seller, and fine as the final customer.

But that's really hard to functionally enforce.

The memory that they are placing in it has to be cheap enough to be worth their while.

You're framing this as if no reputable vendor is willing or able to source cheaper parts.

If they can get a better deal in more RAM, why can't they upgrade the boards? As a consumer, doesn't that benefit you as well?

Which in this climate is highly probably faulty memory, (...)

That's specious reasoning and blatant fear-mongering. Consumer protection laws require vendors to support their products. If RAM is faulty, whether it was hand soldered by Eben Upton himself or hacked from a Soviet fridge, vendors are compelled to support customers. This means vendors ultimately have an interest in minimizing faulty equipment, because it hurts their bottom line.

So why can't people have the right to upgrade their hardware? I thought we already went through this battle in the 1980s.

A reputable vendor resells a product they've modified as unmodified?

A reputable vendor resells a product they've modified as unmodified?

I wouldn't mind buying a 16GB board even though the official models at most ship with 8gb.

I'd even wouldn't mind buying the kit and taking a stab at resoldering it myself.

I mean, think about it. what is the whole point of a raspberry pi?

Even if you might not, why would your opinion prevent others from doing what they want with their hardware?

Whether it’s fraud depends heavily on how it’s sold.

If it’s represented as a new product or offered with manufacturer’s warranty, that would cross into fraud.

I mean the Pi currently makes little to no sense to buy anyway. So locking down parts barely moves the needle. The value proposition is unbelievably bad at spending upwards of $423 CAD for a 16GB Raspberry Pi. Which is literally just the bare board.

The 2026 financial report is apparently this Thursday on Sept 24. So will see how this played out for them. Their stock is all over the place anyway with low float.

The pi is useful because it is well supported. Either buy a x86, or buy pi - anything else and good luck keeping it working. You need to plan on spending your time writing/maintain the drivers to keep your system working.

Even for pi, the real value is in industrial companies that don't want to hire their own maintainers.

It would be much more user friendly if there was a way to check the serial of a particular PI and see it's original hardware config, manufacture date, and so on.

Rich of them to claim that "users will complain" when their platform is built for hobbiests and tinkerers. What a terrible stance.

their platform is built for hobbiests and tinkerers

I don't think that's been true for a long time. Their main market is commercial users now - reference what happened with COVID shortages and RPi prioritizing nearly all of their capacity to commercial users, leaving tinkerers with little to no stock.

It's tough but I'd still wager that more hobbyists and tinkers will complain when their 8GB Pi that they bought from Amazon, or anywhere really, won't actually run their project that they wanted to use 8GB for properly because that 8GB is little more than a fiction.

They ought to complain to Amazon, then. They were sold one thing but delivered something else.

Raspberry Pi is going down the way iRobot did, succumbing to pressure from chinese players like radxa or orange pi.

Sad to see industry pioneers lose to players that copy them and undercut prices using cheap labor.

I think this is really dumb and stupid. Not that I don't agree with their reasoning - it's actually very reasonable - but that I have a lot of distaste from "saving the customer from themselves" type antifeatures.

Practically speaking, though, this antifeature doesn't affect most people, because I don't think most people are willing to take a heat gun to a microsoldered part just to save a few bucks on RAM. If the RAM was socketed somehow - which at this scale and performance tier is not possible - then I'd probably be way angrier.

Why not just paint the original chips with some special ink that says VOID IF TAMPERED over the RAM chips and the board? Pretty much like other hardware manufacturers do with seals or stickers, wouldn't this solve the issue?

Reading through the EEPROM repo issue[1] makes me a little more sympathetic to the "feature", but I still don't like it at all.

It might help in the short term to stop dodgy resellers who mod the boards with cheap upgraded RAM to make a buck or two...

But the Pi itself is always taking one step forward, one step back in terms of firmware. I've been tinkering with some Qualcomm boards from Radxa and things are slightly better there, though you don't have anywhere near the ecosystem you get with Pi (or onboarding niceties).

[1] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761

Really? I found that issue and all of the related ones really disingenuous from the Pi folks; they just stonewalled everyone with "contact your hardware seller" rather than explaining what was going on even at the glossed-over level they managed in the forum thread.

I do feel for them; they're between a rock and a hard place with mis-labeled clone boards. But their implementation seems to be the most hostile and opaque possible way to achieve these goals (which I also understand from an anti-cloning standpoint, but especially anymore, it's going to get reversed anyway).

I dunno - I think the victims in a lot of these cases aren't stupid. They can't contact the seller because they bought it from 'some guy' who's disappeared into the night. They know they've been had and are trying to get a knock-off board working at the expense of [the time of] someone completely unrelated to this.

It's pretty normal for the first port of call / warranty claim for a busted item to be the dealer that sold it to you.

I absolutely agree that engaging with these people beyond "we added checks to ensure your board has the RAM it came with, and this one failed" is a waste of time, but I think that at least providing that level of response would be much more aligned with the image they're still trying to project than just stonewalling entirely.

"We bricked your board on purpose even though it actually might work fine" isn't good image either. Like, they know they are doing a bad thing!

I think they should instead just introduce a clear system for verifying that a Raspberry Pi is genuine. For example, a code printed directly on the device. If you enter that code on the website, you can see exactly which model it belongs to and how often it has been used. That way, you could determine whether a Raspberry Pi is new or used and whether it has been modified. I saw that once at a thermal paste manufacturer. They used it to solve the problem of counterfeit thermal paste.You just have to get people to actually use the system and tell anyone else who asks for support but doesn't have an original copy to GTFO.This would allow them to avoid the increased support burden without limiting people's ability to upgrade their Raspberry Pi.