The Durak Report March 15, Anno Domini 2026

Wow, it's one of those days. Not much going on at all in politics today.

Like nothing, like really nothing.

Like, repeat day. It's kinda crazy how little news there is, so it's just my stream blather today.

Recently I've been looking into trying to get a Raspberry Pi. What I really want is a CM5 dev kit, but at 8GB instead of 4GB. Oh, and none of that eMMC garbage. eMMC is neat storage, but there's an NVME slot, that's the main Os. I'd like to be able to change OS at will with the SD slot, which is just not possible on the eMMC variants. Bleh.

Also, eMMC, while decent, is just not that great. 100ish MB write is plenty for a backup, I guess, but it also maxes out at 64GB. It might be okay for mass production, but only if that use case doesn't generate data.

And for dabbling around, it's much easier to swap SD cards around, though I could probably still do that with a USB to SD adapter.

Complaints aside eMMC could let me have a default OS I can boot into to write to the other devices, which removes the need of outside computers.

But this still runs into the problem that the dev kits aren't the RAM size I want. Well, easy fix, get an 8gb CM5 lite and just build out a dev kit. Probably cost about the same but…. There are no 8gb CM5 on the official market. Drat. Also, everything is priced crazy right now due to ram shortages.

Okay, well, what else? Could pi500 or 500+ (okay, 270 is too much for the 500+ and I don't want that anyway)

I guess just the pi500. Well, that has everything I want…. Except NVME. I can have USB NVME, but I don't want that extra dangly bit. At 130 bucks it's pricey, but not crazy like the 500+. Now, I think 200 is more than fair for the 500+, but that extra 70 bucks or so due to the LLM bubble make it too much.

BUT… I plan to hand wire my own keyboard at some point which is problematic if I already have a keyboard… Unless I scrap the pi keyboard case at some point and do my own thing.

Bah.

I guess ebay is an option too, but I doubt that's the right way to go.

Of course, there is the option to go standard raspberry pi 5 +NVME hat or w/e. But… Yea… I just want the CM5 that I want.

I guess an M.2 hat is 15, a pi 5 is 125, so that brings me to 140, but with no case, no power, no cables…. And the pi5 has that terrible 5v/5a power needs that most PD chargers don't do…. So I need yet another thing… A waveshare UPS or some such for another 30-40 bucks…

BUT the nvme hat makes everything a pain. The standard pi5 is just not right if I want to do anything with it beyond the nvme drive. Not only does it add extra steps, it adds extra height, which is a problem.

The 8gb pi500 is looking like the right balance at the moment, though cm5 is clearly the best option.

Maybe I just go with the dev kit and accept going to 4GB of ram, though I want to use this as a desktop for a while, and 4gb may not cut it.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFff

Is all I have to say.

Thanks to everyone who reads my little posts here. May you all have a blessed day.

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