The Curse of Soldered RAM
blog.hardill.me.uk121 points by gsky 4 days ago
121 points by gsky 4 days ago
I'm stunned that "mapping out" blocks of bad RAM is a thing you can do. It reminds me of the old days when hard disks had to be "low-level formatted" first (ask your parents, kids) and it would ask you for a list of bad sectors to map out. Sometimes hard disks would even come with a list of known bad ones printed on the top.
'Ask your grandparents' would be more accurate. Sales of models of hard drive that could be low level formatted had almost entirely ended by the year 1992. Primitive PC's that only ran DOS and had 20MB or 40MB hard drives were considered obsolete over thirty years ago, when windows 3.11 onwards existed.
Hey! I was there and my kid is still a teenager.
I was programming already in the mid 80s and helping my dad figure out 20MB "Winchesters" in the late 80s/early 90s.
In the summer of 1989, I had completed all my work for my BS-CS degree, and was waiting for the University to give me a diploma. I took a summer internship at Imprimis (later bought by Seagate), and I was honored to work with the Manufacturing Engineers for the Wren IV through Wren VII hard drive lines.
The Wren VII was the first consumer-grade SCSI hard drive with a capacity of 1GB or more — at 5.25” full height. The company had done a commercial-grade SAS drive based on the same chassis the year before. You had to be super careful with those magnets — they could cut off a finger, if you weren’t looking. And they were virtually impossible to remove from a fridge, once applied.
My job was to write a software system that could be used to monitor quality control issues in the manufacturing line, towards a goal of continual process improvement. I didn’t manage to get the whole management system built before I left, but I did get the full toolkit built, and the management system was intended to be a relatively simple layer on top of the toolkit.
Fun times!
I had a Seagate Cheetah ~70GB 10'000 rpm SCSI HDD from around 2002 that could be low-level formatted. I could even change physical sector size.
Did the drive give you more sectors when you used a smaller sector size and fewer sectors when you used a larger sector size? If the number of sectors didn't change, it probably didn't actually do a low-level format and instead just toggled whether the drive firmware would skip over the extra bytes as if they didn't exist.
Listen here whippersnapper.
Oh shit.
Damn. I don't have grandkids yet but ok.
I didn't come to HN to confront my own mortality and age ;P
Those aren't museum artefacts, it's just retro.
Get off my lawn.
"Bad" ram re-mapping is handy for equipment that has special areas of memory shared with hardware like accelerator ASIC, other cpu, or unknown features. Also useful in extreme environment contexts, where the chips may get heavily damaged while in use.
>hard disks would even come with a list of known bad ones printed on the top.
HDD still do, but the flash on the controller quietly handles sector sparing, and remapping. This is why one can't just swap unmodified controller PCB anymore for data-recovery without secret vendor software. =3
Also hard drives, from about the last fifteen years, have calibration data for the specific individual heads that read and write the data to/from the platter.
Some, not all, harddrives have an eeprom that can be transplanted to a different pcb when trying to do data recovery on a drive with a faulty circuit board.
>harddrives have an eeprom that can be transplanted to a different pcb
It is not that simple, as the identical part number may have a lot# with slightly different PCB/chips/firmware. If folks have done forensic recovery, than they get a rather quick education about the constant changes to retail HDD design. =3
The race to make laptops thinner is pointless. I wish I could buy a thicker laptop that is more robust, repairable, expandable, and has better cooling, with the extra space filled with batteries.
> The race to make laptops thinner is pointless.
Perhaps for you, but I very much care about my laptop's size and especially it's weight, as I carry it around on a daily basis.
Repairing or upgrading it aren't really of interest to me, as I wouldn't be able to aquire the parts where I typically live anyway. And performance and cooling have already been more than good enough for me in most laptops for the last decade.
I have lots of family and friends who bring me their broken "thin laptops." Their thinness makes them super fragile, and they break all the time. They're also getting harder to repair as assembly becomes more convoluted each year. Even basic maintenance, like cleaning the fans, requires increasingly super difficult disassembly.
The latest models require repeatedly disassembling the sandwich from both sides. You have to remove the keyboard to access a screw, open the bottom, remove another screw to lift the top, then go back and forth between both sides just to reach a fan that frequently gets clogged with dust and needs frequent, regular cleaning.
Even worse, the unavoidable cleaning voids the warranty.
I don't think most people do maintenance on their laptops at all, which is probably why they usually end up with that one friend/family member who does.
Laptop manufacturers would like to have you think cleaning them or removing a "warranty void if removed" sticker over a screw actually voids the warranty but it usually doesn't actually.
Most people do repairs all the time but that doesn’t mean it has to be ib their garage with their own tools and bare hands. Point is getting it repaired
Easily
Affordably
Anywhere (almost anywhere)
In other words: not having to face something like this: “ah, so your A and G key don’t work? Lovely. Let’s look. Got it! The chassis needs changing and motherboard which is soldered into it. Good news, we can let you reuse the battery” and all that a bright grin that puts my house’s brightest LED to utter shame.
I just had a MacBook fixed. The hinge area had accumulated crunchy food debris, and it ended up busting the hinge angle sensor. But this sensor is paired with the top case, so the top case had to get replaced too, so the entire bill came to close to one thousand.
So.. can someone tell me again why a humble hinge angle sensor is paired with an entire hideously expensive top case assembly ?
> Most people do repairs all the time but that doesn’t mean it has to be ib their garage with their own tools and bare hands.
Unless you live in India or a similarly developing country, this hasn't been true for many decades.
The local cost of labor is simply too high to make it economical to repair even simple things, let alone complex electronics.
Thanks for sharing. Good news: your needs should be very well served by the existing market.
>Perhaps for you, but I very much care about my laptop's size and especially it's weight, as I carry it around on a daily basis.
Thinner devices need more solid enforcement to stay stiff. My Thinkpad X60s weighs the same as a Macbook Air and it's infinitely more upgradable.
The post you replied to literally doesn't care about upgrades. More enforcement also doesn't matter if its what you need to get specifically _what was asked for_, which is a thinner device in this case. I also wouldn't like an X60 if it meant I have to leave things out of my bag.
I genuinely don't think people care that much about thin laptops.
Could it be that thin laptops are largely an excuse to provide a need to solder RAM; which in turn encourages consumption through obsolescence?
People care immensely about size and weight, especially perceived size.
I'd argue a lot of people care about being able to upgrade RAM more.
What is the profit for a manufacturer if you buy one laptop and use it for 10 years straight instead of buying a new one every 3 years?
Also they not only solder DRAM, now they solder keyboards so that you cannot replace it easily. My garbage keyboard broke after just 2 years of using and I had to solder ~100 plastic pins to replace it (and the replacement keyboard turned out to be not of a great quality).
Yeah. My sister had a laptop that required a heat gun to remove its fragile keyboard, which was glued in place.
Until very recently, the low power version of RAM had to be soldered to the motherboard.
If you want the battery life improvements, bear in mind that there is a hard limit on how large a battery you are allowed to fly with, so low power components are important.
I find it difficult to believe that any touch typist favors a thinner laptop, since their keyboards are inevitably worse to type on due to the reduced key travel. Typing on a Macbook Pro keyboard reminds me of this old toy:
I prefer typing on my MacBook Pro over a standard keyboard. It’s what I’m used to after primarily using it for a few years for school.
I care more about weight and these things aren’t really light anyway. Also people, imho, unnecessarily obsessed about thinness — because the difference is not 0.5 inch vs 2.5 inch, it’s something that no self-respecting laptop bah will register the difference in any meaningful way, unless someone likes to stuff their 13-16 inch laptops in the jeans pockets :)
I wish that my MBP14 was as thin as my partner’s MBA13.
Not to mention how often I long for my MBA11 with the tapered body which almost made it feel like it was floating in my lap when working from the couch.
My work laptop has just been ‘upgraded’ to a standard issue MBP14 and I so miss my MBA13 (fortunately I have one as my personal laptop)
Framework?
Framework does exactly what the GP claims to want.
Unfortunately, not many people making those claims _actually_ want them by revealed preferences. They overwhelmingly want the lower price laptops with similar performance specs.
Or… there’s a level of value that people will assign to the repairability offered by Framework, but the current cost is too high?
I like and support what Framework offers. But when I last bought a laptop (a couple of years ago now) the FW13 was almost double the price of a similarly-specc’d and thinner/lighter Asus. (From €1000 to ~€18-1900).
I’d probably pay a ~40% premium for FW, all else being equal, but 80-90% is just too much: it just doesn’t make sense to whatever value-assessment algorithms I’ve developed over time.
> I’d probably pay a ~40% premium for FW
and you'd be one of the higher ones.
But a 40% premium is not enough to sustain framework imho. The business model of framework is that you don't buy a new laptop, but just upgrade. Therefore, the lifetime value of one customer on framework is less than that of an Asus buyer (who would have to buy a new laptop every new CPU generation or when batteries die, which is probably at most 5 years).
Therefore, framework has to charge a lot more per customer to make the business make sense. 2x premium is not unreasonable under this sort of assumption.
I personally do think they're doing a good job of course, but i do also wonder the long term viability because their customers are so niche.
> Therefore, framework has to charge a lot more per customer to make the business make sense. 2x premium is not unreasonable under this sort of assumption.
If Framework makes the same margin as other manufacturers its viable. If they get more sales than they otherwise would because people want to buy something that will last it is better business sense than making something just like everyone else. its their USP.
Framework would have higher fixed cost compared to the incumbent manufacturers, if their number of customers are smaller. Therefore, to even get the same fixed margin, they'd have to charge a higher price (not to mention the same margin is unlikely to sustain them unlike the other manufacturers).
But with the current increase in prices of hardware, i expect people to start thinking about repairability and upgradeability, which would increase the total size of potential customer base.
Firstly, unless the manufacture themselves then the difference in fixed cost may not be significant. Its very unlikely that they are high enough by enough to require charging double. Most of the costs of manufacturing something like this will be variable cost.
This is also an entirely different issue from the lifetime value of a customer.
Depends on the margin on upgrade components. There may be a point that’s high enough for profit but still cheaper for the consumer than a new laptop of comparable specs.
> But a 40% premium is not enough to sustain framework imho. The business model of framework is that you don't buy a new laptop, but just upgrade. Therefore, the lifetime value of one customer on framework is less than that of an Asus buyer (who would have to buy a new laptop every new CPU generation or when batteries die, which is probably at most 5 years).
> Therefore, framework has to charge a lot more per customer to make the business make sense. 2x premium is not unreasonable under this sort of assumption.
If this is their model, maybe it makes sense from an MBA perspective, but I'm more in the MBAs-are-ruining-the-world camp, and I hate it.
A few points:
- I suspect that private buyers of laptops rarely have strong loyalty to a single brand, so Asus et al can't assume a long chain of purchases over time - they have to continue to compete on price and specs. Framework can probably assume stronger brand loyalty than every other manufacturer out there, based on a) if you've paid their hefty premium, you're really into what they're offering, and b) you've paid the high price of entry for the promise of lower-cost upgrades down the line, which you can only get from Framework. So Framework can probably assume a longer guaranteed income from each customer than any other manufacturer, even if the actual value decreases over time (due to lower cost of upgrades vs. full systems). However, if the upgrades are profitable as individual items, they still win.
- I'd prefer to see Framework sell computers and components at the lowest possible price they can while still being a viable business, with the margin of those items each justifying their existence individually. I appreciate that their economies of scale are different to larger manufacturers and their designs may be more expensive to deliver - this would be covered by a (modest) premium.
- Ultimately, I'd characterise the business model you described as "we'll f*k you on entry, and you might claw back some value over time". I'd rather aim for "we'll sell you a good product for a reasonable price today, and then delight you with the bonus of upgradability later on".
- I wonder whether their issue might actually be scale of manufacturing: that they can't deliver enough systems quickly/reliably enough to compete for a broader market (which would require lower margins to attract more price-sensitive customers) thereby driving them to target a more limited market of nerds who love the repairability concept, and also price higher per system to make the numbers work?
> If this is their model, maybe it makes sense from an MBA perspective
It does not. An MBA would hopefully teach someone to understand it gives Framework a USP and they only need the same margins as anyone else.
> A few points
Of those the first and last are the sort of things an MBA should teach someone to think about. The second is much the same and part wanting an efficient market (i.e. what free market capitalism is supposed to deliver). the third is entirely right.
Speaking as someone who did buy a framework as my primary computer (and has been happy with it), my hesitation had much more to do with uncertainty about the execution than with price, which is pretty competitive when you diy. Especially because for the value proposition to pay off, the company/ecosystem has to survive for several years at least and continue making compatible product in the categories I would want. It's a big investment for most people and it's not surprising most go with a safe/known option.
> which is pretty competitive when you diy
I'm pretty sure my memory is correct, and for a DIY Ryzen 8840/16GB/1TB it was roughly an 80-90% premium, which I'd not describe as competitive.
My memory is more like 20% premium for the practical options that I could find on the market at the time (spring 2024). But ymmv depending what specs you actually care about. If the off the shelf thinkpads or whatever actually match the set of specs you want, then they will be cheaper than the equally-speced framework by a bigger margin. Also worth noting that there have been a lot of sales on the framework end, so that could give different perceptions depending on timing. Oh, and also I'm talking about buying the memory and SSD elsewhere, not as part of the kit. That was a chunk of savings too.
Digging around with Wayback Machine, a DIY Ryzen 7840 (I wrote 8840 incorrectly earlier) with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows Home, a power adapter, and four basic expansion cards would have been 1768 EUR in 1H 2024.
Instead, I got an ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED with those specs (albeit a slightly bigger better screen) for exactly 1000 EUR in a local shop.
Now, yes, I could remove the Windows cost (ahem), not pay for a charger, and save a little buying RAM and an SSD from elsewhere, but then it's not remotely an apples-to-apples comparison.
But that's exactly the point: removing the charger, windows and buying ram elsewhere is exactly the comparison that makes sense if you have a good charger, don't run windows, and don't mind your ram coming on a different day of the week. Ymmv as I said.
If you want to quibble with words, you're right that I could have hedged more in my original comment, e.g. "cost can be competitive depending what exactly you are looking for". I'm not denying your experience for what you wanted, but for what I wanted, the costs were pretty close.