Re: PCB version control

On 2025-03-27, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 3/27/2025 1:12 AM, Ian wrote:

A real example, that caused some pain, was the Raspberry Pi 3B+,
which at some point changed internally from rev. 1.3 to rev 1.4.
Unfortunately this was not made visible on purchase ("It's an RPi
3B+"), and the firmware image we were using wouldn't boot on the
rev. 1.4 hardware.

>
It's hard to imagine something changed that much that the
firmware couldn't have "massaged" the interface to be
compatible.

Well the newer firmware could handle both revs of course, but our
image was built on the older firmware which knew nothing of this
newfangled 1.4 tin.

And the new firmware only came with a new kernel, and new userland
software stack that was incompatible with our driver and application,
so we had to knife'n'fork the new firmware into the image as the
least worst solution.

And, whats even more annoying, was that we'd done a bulk order for
the Pi3B+ to avoid this sort of thing, but half the delivery was
delayed by 12 months over the pandemic parts shortage.

End moan :)

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"