ive recently acquired a used devterm a04 for the purposes of simple pico 8 game development and i have to say this device is an incredible disappointment. jumping through a lot of hurdles to update to the latest firmware without being blocked by the “no pubkey” error, upgrading both fan daemon and gearbox, setting every core to be enabled and in performance mode this thing is a hunk of trash. opening a terminal window takes 5+ seconds, the build quality is absolutely subpar, the keyboard is an ergonomic nightmare and of course the trackball is unresponsive.
yes its marketed as “hackable” and im sure most of you will bend over backwards to justify this piece of garbage but i think its pretty amazing clockwork pi got away with this.
i had initially considered upgrading it to a cm5 using the adapter from the store but im gonna cancel my order and cut my losses. never again.
The a06 is not better, and currently the CM3 is not better. If you go up to a CM4 it might be decent again, Rex has some nice images for CM4 and CM5.
For now I don’t want to spend the money on it, the uConsole is doing what I need and as soon as my ethernet card arrives, it will be all I need.
Eventually I may upgrade my Devterm to a CM4, but I’m not in a hurry at all!
And in their defense, Clockwork did a good job with it, they just have no follow through with the OS. If the Armbian updates worked, I probably wouldn’t have bought my uConsole. But Armbian like the Bookworm and Parrot that Rex provides just doesn’t seem to like the display panel. Anything above kernel 5.17 and no more display.
And all that said, My DevTerm has been in a drawer for 2 years, cracked it back out when I ordered the uConsole and I did by the CM4 adapter for it. I also stuck a CM3 in there to see if the images that Rex makes would work. But he doesn’t have a Devterm to fool with, so he’s guessing at the display problem and I’m not enough of a linux user to help fix it.
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I think the DevTerm is the weakest product from Clockwork Pi. That said, I have two of them an A06 that I hacked in a CM3 module and one I upgraded to a CM4 module.
I like the keyboard, but I used to code on an Psion Revo / Diamond Mako and an EeePC 701, so funky half size keyboards are something I accept as part of the form factor. The trackball that the DevTerm ships with is absolutely a nightmare. Just endless frustration to the point that not having a trackball might have been the better choice. Configuring the gamepad controls for mouse movement is a decent compromise. Getting a new trackball is an easy fix that isn’t terribly expensive, but shipping was more than the component for me.
Your best bet is to sell your DevTerm and cancel your orders. You are clearly not happy with it. There’s nothing that can likely be done to change your mind. Your use cases or requirements are simply different than other people here. And that’s OK!
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