Suddenly only 1/4 the RAM [1GB model shipped as 4GB]

[ejolson]

Reading the serial console during boot to see how much memory the system has is the first part of restoring sanity. Does the system really only have 1GB? or 4GB? We know it's 4GB but the sanity test is exactly that - to stop us going insane. When it reports 4GB then we look at what could be changing it to 1GB. Other ways to check are comparing the numbers on the RAM chips.

I finally got around to checking the numbers on the RAM chips. It seems to have PB047-125PT on it just like described in the post

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9377

for the 1GB model, so I guess the same thing happened to me. I was shipped a 1GB model marked as a 4GB model on the box. Needless to say, I'm not very happy about this as I wasted quite a bit of effort checking the software before checking the chip. As the other board is definitely 4GB, I must have become confused about whether this board ever showed 1GB available.

My suspicion is that right now is also long past the return by date. These boards were ordered directly from the manufacturer and arrived by China post at the beginning of the epidemic. Does anyone know is it possible to obtain a replacement? As this same problem has happened to at least one other person, if I want to buy a replacement, how do I guarantee the same thing won't happen again?