I've been using a Pi 4B for a couple years now. I want to further upgrade to the CM5, the CM5 development kit for example. I found it very weird, for all the info. I've read SD and eMMC can not coexist on the same board due to the h/w design limitations. Since booting and running on SD is slow and unreliable than on the eMMC and SSD, I prefer to boot via the eMMC or external SSD, but I couldn't do that without flashing the board with another adapter, or I need to boot from SD w/o eMMC onboard. In order to write the image to the external drive, like what I did with the Pi 4B I've to first boot via SD, then write the image to USB and then I can boot w/o SD, but I can not do that with the eMMC the same way. When comparing to an standard PC, we can boot from internal or external drive very easily just select from the BIOS/boot menu, but on the Pi family we must pick the right board and take extra steps to do that, but since I've not handled any CM so I could be wrong about that, but it would be far more convenient to have a built in boot menu like a PC.
The other thing is, the CM5 development kit which I am interested in, came with 4G CM5 only. What if I want 8G or the latest 16G version can I still boot with it ? when buying a new h/w especially PC equipment, most people will go for the highest spec. model he/she can afford once and for all, so that it can 'stay fresh' for a longer time without the need to upgrade too soon. It seems to me that the design logic of the Pi/CM was purpose fitted, rather than a multi purpose unit, even the Pi was marketed as a SBC which was supposed to be a self-contained do it all unit, it did not come with internal storage and must use an add-ons adapter board, which I feel not very logically !
The other thing is, the CM5 development kit which I am interested in, came with 4G CM5 only. What if I want 8G or the latest 16G version can I still boot with it ? when buying a new h/w especially PC equipment, most people will go for the highest spec. model he/she can afford once and for all, so that it can 'stay fresh' for a longer time without the need to upgrade too soon. It seems to me that the design logic of the Pi/CM was purpose fitted, rather than a multi purpose unit, even the Pi was marketed as a SBC which was supposed to be a self-contained do it all unit, it did not come with internal storage and must use an add-ons adapter board, which I feel not very logically !
Statistics: Posted by lotech — Tue Feb 04, 2025 2:33 am