Apparently it is possible to boot the Pi from a USB stick instead of the uSD card.? How is this done?? Sorry for my ignorance.

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Also, Dave mentioned it, but I want to highlight the need to remove the microSD card from the RPi 4 - I suspect (but do not know for certain) that the RPi 4 boot order will have the RPi 4 boot from the microSD no mater what is attached to the USB ports.

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Where is the “BOOT_ORDER” parameter within the code.

I would like to try booting from external media but am not that familiar with where to find it.?

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FYI, Jeff Geerling covers the use of USB and PCIe booting for Raspberry Pis in great detail on his blog (; for example - ) and on YouTube ().

FYI, Jeff Geerling covers the use of USB and PCIe booting for Raspberry Pis in great detail on his blog (; for example - ) and on YouTube ().

On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 11:50 AM, Dave, N1AI wrote:

On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 02:30 PM, WB6GJE Mike wrote:

FYI, Jeff Geerling covers the use of USB and PCIe booting for Raspberry Pis in great detail on his blog ( ; for example - ) and on YouTube ( ).

I definitely love Jeff's work and watch every video as they come out.? The only caution I would raise is that he tends to be working on the bleeding edge with Pi, so some of his older articles don't age too well, because once the stuff he is working with becomes mainstreamed usually easier ways to do things have been invented or discovered.? This is not the case for PCIe right now, it is still "bleeding edge" and his stuff is still the best reference IMO.? For USB I posted the Tom's Hardware link because I think it's easier for most people to follow.? In particular Imager can be used to do some things Jeff did manually.

-- Regards, Dave, N1AI

I agree with Dave - should have noted that Jeff Geerling is an early adopter and he typically does not update his posts with information as features go mainstream. For example, I was following his guidance on setting up an NVMe drive using one of the PCIe adapters for the Raspberry Pi 5. Turns out it was missing one config change necessary to make it work with the production version of the board (but worked with the proto board he reviewed). That said, don't be afraid to use the Google or DuckDuckGo for any of the Pi-related questions posed in this forum. Get a consensus of advice and go with information that appears consistently across a number of YouTube videos and/or blog posts.

Get a consensus of advice and go with information that appears consistently across a number of YouTube videos and/or blog posts.

Wow, that's a perfect lead-in for me.? I wrote most of the below for another platform, but IMO it fits into this discussion here about Pi 5 and NVMe.? It also fits into some stuff I wrote earlier about how I feel Pi will be under more pressure from small form-factor (SFF) PCs using x86 processors, and that the sBITX community will have to be ready for things to change more rapidly than in the past

IMO design decisions made by the Pi Foundation make it relatively easy for them to move on to Pi 6 and beyond because they've put all the IO onto a separate chip.? That makes it easier for them to drop a newer/faster CPU into their design than they have in the past, and such newer/faster ARM CPUs already exist.? ? They may have to, because SFF PCs IMO are already strong competitors so there is already a competitive threat that could easily intensify.? I'm saying this since I think a lot of people have gotten used to the slower development pace of the COVID era, but I think those days are long over.??

So, we see that Jeff Geerling is jumping onto the Pi 5 vs N100 SFF PC bandwagon after Christopher Barnatt / Explaining Computers did so a week or so ago.??

Jeff:??

Chris:??

Jeff is doing an almost exact match on price and is fairly close on form factor, whereas Chris's N100 PC was not a SFF PC, it was a mini-ITX so bigger case and PSU and cost 1.5 times more than his Pi 5 setup.? ?Yet Chris's N100 has very similar specifications to Jeff's.? Chris provides more details on specifications and performance than Jeff did.? For instance Chris tells us his motherboard supports two-lane PCIe V3, whereas Jeff doesn't get into that level of detail.

Jeff's video is really amusing to me since my PCIe to NVMe adapter arrived last night for my Pi 5 and I was doing almost all the same stuff he was doing in the setup phase of this video myself last night.? My Pi 5 setup is pretty much identical to Chris's.? We both have the Pineberry Pi Hat! Bottom whereas Jeff has the Top model.??

Jeff is right that the Pi world requires you to select, purchase and assemble more 'stuff' to get a useful setup whereas most SFF PCs come with all the stuff you need right out of the box.? ?He is also right that it's really hard to know if a given Pi case will work with a given top/bottom device and still provide good air flow, still have the holes line up with the jacks, still be able to get at the sdcard, power button, camera/display connectors, etc.

My summary of both videos is that at a similar price point the N100 platforms delivers somewhat faster performance but draws somewhat more power both at idle and under load to deliver that performance.? The N100 is clearly faster at anything that involves graphics and video since it has a better GPU with better software support.? The N100 takes up more space, but is more expandable.? Jeff's N100 has room for a 2nd NVMe storage device and has a slot for mobile data dongles too.? He doesn't say if the memory is expandable or not.? Also, I don't know how 'battery friendly' its voltage requirements are.

On the software side assuming you are using the "native" software for the box, Debian Linux on the Pi boots up pretty much ready to use whereas Windows makes you accept a EULA, accept or avoid a Microsoft account, turn off a whole bunch of data collectors, only provides the Edge browser by default etc so is worse from a privacy point of view.? Windows is also a bigger target for malware providers although one shouldn't presume Linux isn't also targeted quite often too.? And, of course, you can always install Debian on the N100 PCs and bypass Windows entirely.? Regardless of what thinks of Windows, though, being able to offer it is a competitive advantage, IMO.

--
Regards,
Dave, N1AI

The N100 vs RPi 5 debate seems to ignore those 40 pins on the RPi that the N100 solutions lack.

Are we trying to solve a software problem or a hardware problem?

I think you'd be hard-pressed to just "drop in" an N100 system in a device like the uBitx, there would be a significant effort to interface the N100 system to a uBitx board I imagine.

N100 systems are great values and solve a number of problems, but they are not suitable in some applications the RPi excels at, namely embedded applications.

If your application doesn't require the 40 pin GPIO header, why are you using an RPi?

NOTE: if $100-150 N100 systems were available at the time, Mr Upton would never have developed the RPi - his goal was a $100ish desktop that required a TV for output that could be used in education for third-world students using phone chargers, cheap keyboards/mice, etc.

On Feb 3, 2024, at 14:43, Dave, N1AI <n1ai@...> wrote:

The point I was trying to make is that Upton's tiny desktop concept risks getting buried by N100 or similar systems.

Overall IMO this, and the newly-announced IPO, will put pressure on Upton and team to crank up the innovation.

On Feb 3, 2024, at 14:43, Dave, N1AI <n1ai@...> wrote:

The point I was trying to make is that Upton's tiny desktop concept risks getting buried by N100 or similar systems.

My point was they were designed for different use cases.

You wrote "his goal was a $100ish desktop?that required a TV for output that could be used in education for third-world students using phone chargers, cheap keyboards/mice, etc." -- how is that use case different from what you can do with a $100-ish N100???

Then consider the N100 can run far more software natively and is more expandable so quite possibly a better purchase than a Pi 5 desktop.

?

Overall IMO this, and the newly-announced IPO, will put pressure on Upton and team to crank up the innovation.

RPi Foundation has been building selling *huge* numbers of boards for embedded applications to industrial customers. I haven't heard about an IPO, but I suspect it will allow RPi Foundation to focus on educational issues and applications and the spin-off commercial organization can focus on industrial issues and applications, as well as (I imagine) help sponsor RPi Foundation.

N.B. Your linked-to alternative is priced at $279, more than 3x the cost of an 8 Gig RPi 5...

I guess you just aren't following along, because I just wrote "It's a bit pricier now, but overall it seems quite possible that an Intel variant could take away a lot of Pi's lunch money sooner or later", and earlier in this thread (?here ) I wrote "Jeff is right that the Pi world requires you to select, purchase and assemble more 'stuff' to get a useful setup whereas most SFF PCs come with all the stuff you need right out of the box" and provided links to Jeff's video which shows if you price out all the stuff you need to buy to use a Pi 5 in a desktop configuration then you spend a lot more than the $85 or so that a raw Pi 5 8GB costs.? Want power?? More money!? Want a fan?? More money!? Want a case?? More money!? Want storage faster than a micro sd card?? More money!

I get it, Pi excels at embedded applications, but hfsignals.com sells board-only setups and ones in cases, and most of the board-only units seem to stay in people's shacks, from what I read on this forum.? I own one of each and my board-only unit is probably never going into a case.? I might have considered interfacing it to something other than a Pi, but the mechanical design pretty much rules that out in the near term.

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