I've been putting up with using a Pi 5 for some time. Recently the fan stopped. I'm not sure if it was because the fan wore out (unlikely, I've tried a replacement and both work fine with Ubuntu and RPi OS) or because of a firmware update.
So I got a Pi 4b.
First impressions. Ugh. The case is far worse than the Pi 5 (both standard RPi cases). I'm not sure how the fan is supposed to get air in and out. Through the little cracks around the ethernet ports? The Pi doesn't sit flush in the bottom of the case which makes inserting a micro SD card almost impossible. Not wanting to force it I usually take the top off the case so that I can hold down the circuit board. No such problem with the Pi 5.
Now, booting. RPi OS (same SD card as for Pi 5) boots OK.
I've tied booting 14.2 and 15, both just give a rainbow screen and a bit of fan noise. Following this https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry Pi#RPI4_and_RPi400_Notes I tried switching HDMI port and setting the memory to 4015.
15 still fails to boot, I get these messages
XHCI timeout on event type 0 ...
and occasionally
efipart_readwrite: rw=1 blk=104640 size=4 status=7
I managed to boot 14.2. There was a message that the bootloader is too old. It's still fairly noisy. It's also slow (maybe because I booted off USB, fed up with trying to get the card into the microSD slot).
Any comments for how I could get a happier experience?
So I got a Pi 4b.
First impressions. Ugh. The case is far worse than the Pi 5 (both standard RPi cases). I'm not sure how the fan is supposed to get air in and out. Through the little cracks around the ethernet ports? The Pi doesn't sit flush in the bottom of the case which makes inserting a micro SD card almost impossible. Not wanting to force it I usually take the top off the case so that I can hold down the circuit board. No such problem with the Pi 5.
Now, booting. RPi OS (same SD card as for Pi 5) boots OK.
I've tied booting 14.2 and 15, both just give a rainbow screen and a bit of fan noise. Following this https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry Pi#RPI4_and_RPi400_Notes I tried switching HDMI port and setting the memory to 4015.
15 still fails to boot, I get these messages
XHCI timeout on event type 0 ...
and occasionally
efipart_readwrite: rw=1 blk=104640 size=4 status=7
I managed to boot 14.2. There was a message that the bootloader is too old. It's still fairly noisy. It's also slow (maybe because I booted off USB, fed up with trying to get the card into the microSD slot).
Any comments for how I could get a happier experience?