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Raspberry Pi Pushing Digital Restrictions (DRM) Schemes
Also see: Raspberry Pi Has Microsoft Secrets Inside, Now DRM
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Raspberry Pi locks boards to factory RAM capacities in firmware — engineer tells DIY modders 'don't waste your time' trying repairs or upgrades, company cites shady reseller scams
PhilE explains the problem that faced Raspberry Pi and some users, airing the company’s side of the argument. “If labor is cheap enough then there may be a minor financial gain in buying a part with say a 2GB part, swapping it for an 8GB part of dubious origin, and reselling it as an 8GB device,” says the forum mod. “However, this brings an element of risk to the user - the board hasn't been tested by us - and is a potential support burden for us, with customers complaining of unreliable devices. We therefore remove the commercial incentive by locking devices to their original RAM size.”
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Hackaday ☛ Raspberry Pi Locks Down RAM Upgrades
Naturally there is a valid reason for wanting to prevent unscrupulous RAM module changes, with a [Geekworm] blog post from earlier this year detailing this exact issue and how each board is marked with a specific code that identifies the model, RAM size, RAM manufacturer and such. Based on the earlier linked forum post and also a 2025-era GitHub ticket on the rpi-eeprom project, the resulting symptoms seem to vary from not seeing the additional RAM to the board not booting at all.
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Hackaday ☛ Raspberry Pi RAM Restrictions No Big Deal, Frankly
Things changed. You can’t really get RAM chips anymore. You also can’t get RAM sticks. You can’t get even SSDs with RAM chips on them. Even getting Raspberry Pi boards can be hard unless you know where to look. This is where a recent three-minute video by [Jeff Geerling] finds us.
It's FOSS:
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Raspberry Pi Disallows RAM Upgrades to Fight Fraud, Does it Make Sense?
Something that flew under the radar a while back is getting attention again. A post on the r/selfhosted subreddit reminds us that the Raspberry Pi 5 will refuse to boot if it detects RAM that doesn't match the memory configuration recorded at the factory.