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Raspberry Pi admits to faulty USB-C design on the Pi 4
The Raspberry Pi 4 was announced two weeks ago as a major new upgrade to the line of cheap single-board hobbyist computers. The Pi 4 featured a faster CPU, options for up to 4GB of RAM, and a new, modern USB-C port for power delivery. The Pi 4 was the Raspberry Pi Foundation's first ever USB-C device, and, well, they screwed it up.
As detailed by Tyler Ward, the Raspberry Pi 4 has a non-compliant USB-C charging port and doesn't work with as many chargers as it should. Thanks to the open nature of Raspberry Pi (even the schematics are online!), Ward was able to discover that Raspberry Pi just didn't design its USB-C port correctly. Two "CC" pins on a USB-C port are supposed to each get their own 5.1K ohms resistor, but Raspberry Pi came up with its own circuit design that allows them to share a single resistor. This is not a compliant design and breaks compatibility with some of the more powerful USB-C chargers out there.
[...] The Pi 4 is not the first high-profile device to get the USB-C spec wrong. The Nintendo Switch also has a non-compliant USB-C port and has issues with certain USB-C cables as a result.
After reports started popping up on the Internet, Raspberry Pi cofounder Eben Upton admitted to TechRepublic that "A smart charger with an e-marked cable will incorrectly identify the Raspberry Pi 4 as an audio adapter accessory and refuse to provide power." Upton went on to say, "I expect this will be fixed in a future board revision, but for now users will need to apply one of the suggested workarounds. It's surprising this didn't show up in our (quite extensive) field testing program."
Probably not a dealbreaker (the cables that do work are cheaper), but could be annoying.
Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Launched
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Wednesday July 10 2019, @11:58AM
I like that theory but I'm going to toss out another one: blame the user. Not just with RPI but with Odroid as well, both from the vendor and from the Armbian project, blame the user is standard course of action with a trouble report. This does not include listen to the user and it doesn't include understanding the user report. It is just blame the user. And I'm sure it developed because most users were wrong.
But the problem is when you have a user that is right they are also blamed. I had an Odroid in a specific physical configuration with some devices on USB. I applied an Armbian OS update which included a kernel change, rebooted, and USB was dead. Went to get help and was told my power supply sucks ass. Well it's the vendor recommended power supply. It was some form of power issue, they were right about that because moving the USB off to a power hub solved the problem, but it worked fine before the kernel change and didn't work after.
I have two models of Odroid units, one of them works with my TV via HDMI and one does not. For the one that does not work with HDMI there is a FAQ. In the FAQ is an entry that says if this thing doesn't work with your TV it's because your TV uses fake HDMI and there is just nothing that can be done about it so replace your TV with a good one. Thanks for insulting my TV. They might be right, I don't know how fake my HDMI implementation may be, but as for the idea that nothing can be done? The TV works fine with Armbian on the exact same device but not the Odroid supplied Ubuntu.
As far as I can tell this bullshit permeates the entire Linux ecosystem of cheap well known ARM SBC. I've not yet had my Atomic Pis bite me and they are running unmodified Debian. It's the first things they aren't painful and actively fucking with me.