Limiting the capacity of SD cards for the pi

Id be very careful with some ebay laptops. Laptops unfortunately DIE. I have a fully electrically functioning HP one except the case has turned to rubble., I kid you not. The plastic has simply crumbled. It probably biodegraded...I paid £200+ for a refurbished one with some sort of guarantee at 'laptops direct'. Ive boght several things from them, all refurbed or sale price and they have never sold me s*it

Current best offering is this

Or thin clients. I bought a Hp T510 and a fujitsu Futuro s720 for less than 20 euros CPU like a RPI 4 but AMD or Via, 4 gb RAM and a very small Sata flash (16 GB). But runs well with 2.5" hdd via usb (or sata)

Runs Linux well, uses ubuntu. I also got a mini-mac, Core2Duo with 4 Gb ram for that kind of money. (30 euros I think)

Also runs Ubuntu well

Those above are 64-bit. I got some very cheap 32 bits as well - running debian

Very good prices there.

I am not sure I would trust a machine that cheap.

But you trust a 5 euro rpi zero with a cf-card?

These machine have no moving parts (fanless and flashdisk) I stuck spare hdd in them. But then again, they are part of my build farm, so they do not contain anything that important, they get code from github when needed

The idea was to find x64 boxes that could build my system with a small energy footprint. so I also scaled down the CPU, locked it at 800 Mhz preventing it to go to 1.65 GHz

The concern is power consumption, and that they are too old to support stuff like Wake on Lan.

If you use a core duo for significant periods of time, and don't need a room heater, it is cheaper to buy something modern and low power.

It is only if you want a computer that is only turned on occasionally, that such deals start to make sense.

What power does it consume at the plug?

its an AMD GX-217GA and they have TDP 15W But I think it is less if running at half speed.

But power consumption at the plug I don't know

Some do have wake-on-Lan. The fujitsu does.

the core2duo (minimac) has a TDW of 65 W, so that was most for fun. Not used, The fujitsu and HP is used quite a bit.

And even if I buy something even less power-hungry, that will cost me more. And electricity is included in my rent.

And that is the case

But this is a bit off the raspberry pi topic

yes, because its new, and didn't cost 500 when it was new ten years ago...

So is my disintegrated laptop...

Well low power means Arm - best MIPS for yer buck there is.

Yes, I noticed that too!

So then I should not trust my pis from 2012? The Fujitsu went on the market 2014

And I really doubt it cost 500 as new

state 59600 yen in 2014, which is about 380 euros

As I stated above : x64

Arm is (usually) not x64, even though there was a discussion somewhere if x64 refers to only the intel instruction set or to all 64 bits instruction sets, including ARM64.

To me it was obvious that I was talking intel instruction set, not ARM64. Perhaps that was a false assumption on my part.

I do have an unmentioned constraint of a commercial compiler needing x86_64

So, with 11W measured power consumption at 1.65 GHz

No, my point was that if you wanted low power, you wouldnt buy x64.

Ah. Hard to get that on ARM

Not sure about what I have here, but it runs pretty cool

(Intel® Core™ i5-6600T CPU @ 2.70GHz × 4) sez the Linux.

Case isn't warm and I hear no fans.

Pi ZeroW is about 900mW!

Pi's themselves do not have LCD screens that die, keyboards that wear out. plastic cases that turn to dust...touch screens that stop working...batteries that lose capacity. These are what go on laptops, hence my avoidance of uber cheap ones these days

Desktops come with none of those - they last well

Thin clients are desktops. The Pi4 needs 15w or it dies under load

I beg your pardon. The official recommendation is for a 5V 3A power supply for the BOARD - so that there is at least 1 AMP for USB periperals etc.

Interesting. I'll need to replace my power supply to my Pi4 then as It sometimes dies during compilation uses all cores.

It does have a 5v, 3 A power supply. It is then a liar.

What load?

"The Pi 4 draws the following currents: 575 mA while idling. 885 mA while LXDE is being loaded. 600 mA to view 1080p video."

Worst case 3W???

Over the years I've come across three power supplies that would no longer deliver their rated current. The most likely explanation is that a low value resistor, used for current sensing, has gone high in value, or its solder joints are a bit dry.

David

compiling a 1.5 Mloc system with -j0. But now it seems like it is a bad power supply that is the culprit, as others has suggested

SMPS's are strange beasts and can act in weird ways if capoacitors dry out for example .

And the Pi *may* be sensitive to sagging input voltages

Too many unknowns to be definitive