Not All Raspberry Pi’s Are Created Equal

Not all Raspberry Pi’s are created equal!
My third Raspberry Pi was made in China (imagine that) by RS Components a company which has roots in the UK and quite a rich history as well. This third unit has performed well for me with MOST of the SD card images that I use but it WILL NOT boot one of the images that my other two Pi’s have no problem with. I haven’t found any other differences but no matter what I have tried I could not get that particular SD card image to boot up on the RS Raspberry Pi. (It’s the image marked number 1 below).
My observations are not scientific proof that the units are in any way different from each other but in my experience the two UK models do behave differently from the Chinese model in that one instance that I have described. So be aware that you may find similar results using different SD card images in your Raspberry Pi.

I have another Raspberry Pi set up in a box, sort of a “suitcase nuke version” with a 7 inch TV monitor and a tiny keyboard and track pad. With this one I can actually see on the screen what’s going on and control it with the keyboard and track pad.

With my third Raspberry Pi (the one from China) I am running XBMC and using it as a Media Center hooked to my TV in my living room. Since this application is not Ham Radio related I will not go into much about that here. I will only say that you can find information about Raspbmc (http://www.raspbmc.com/) and to configure it I would recommend this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
1. “Hands Free” DVAP with Halt and Reboot commands through your radio and VNC control(https://www.dropbox.
2. Build your own image card following these instructions (http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/
3. The NJ6N version instructions (http://nj6n.com/dstar/dvap_
Note: These SD card images are configured to use only the DPLUS Gateways and Reflectors and they do not use the DExtra protocol used by the xReflector system. I have not experimented with any of the ircDDB configured images.
In order to get one of these images onto an SD card there is special software Win32 Disk Imager(http://sourceforge.net/
I hope this information that I have learned is helpful to other Raspberry Pi users and enthusiasts. That is my purpose for sharing it with you. Good luck experimenting and please share your results too.