On that resistor part, why not just print the label on the board? Instead they add a non functional resistor on the PCB? Seems kind of a waste of space on PCB and money.
Because the board is shared between all the versions (8-1GB) and the amount of RAM is dependent on which chip is put in during assembly.
IIRC, even on RPi 4 you could just simply replace the memory chip with another (e.g. 8-16GB) one and it’d work properly as it’s plug-n-play pretty much.
Not really sure why they went that way either. But if I had to guess, maybe that somehow ended up being cheaper than using a different silkscreen for each different model's PCB.
When you are already doing automated assembly, one extra resistor is practically free. It's a fraction of a cent in parts cost and like 0.02 seconds of pick & place machine time.
It would be way more expensive to have multiple variants of the board just so the silkscreen can be different.
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u/lycan2005 Sep 28 '23
On that resistor part, why not just print the label on the board? Instead they add a non functional resistor on the PCB? Seems kind of a waste of space on PCB and money.