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Raspberry Pi 1b+

General info

The revised version of the raspberry pi 1b has nearly the same form factor used to this day but with the very slow BCM2835 SOC shared with the pi zero.

Specs

SOC: BCM2835

CPU: 1C ARM1176JZF-S 700Mhz

GPU: Videocore IV 250Mhz

RAM: 512MB 400Mhz

Storage: MicroSD-Card-Slot

IO:4xUSB2 40pinGPIO i2c UART

Audio: 3.5mmAV

Display-Ports: full-size-HDMI Composite-Video-3.5mm DSI CSI

Network: 100M Ethernet

Power: 5.1v 2.5A USB-Micro-B

Performance

The rpi1b+ is Unbelievably Slow, basically anything graphical except the simplest of things (like dillo) will be unusable, video playback on desktop linux also is usable but works on Kodi at lower resolution.

For Terminal use the rpi1b+ is fine most terminal applications like Lynx, htop and even some games run quite snapy in the terminal, But once you run graphical applicatons it has a very hard time.

Tested Distros

Alpine Linux: This is what i would recommend if you going to use it as a server or a terminal based "desktop".
Void Linux: Works about as good as Alpine but graphical desktop stuff seems to work better.
DietPi: Runs ok, but the apt package manager is very slow.
Rasperry Pi OS: Not recommended, just to much for this board the Lite version works a lot better but still isn't great.
KODI: Works but slow and won't handle anything beyond 480p.

Images & Diagrams

.----------------------------------.
|O####################### O  |‾‾‾‾‾‾|
|  Raspberry Pi 1 B+         | USB2>|
|         ____          __   |______|
||       |bcm |        |  |  |‾‾‾‾‾‾|
||<DSI   |2835|         ‾‾   | USB2>| --Top
||        ‾‾‾‾               |______|
|               CSI>|       |‾‾‾‾‾‾‾|
| M-USB    HDMI     | |‾|   |eth100M|
|O __     |‾‾‾‾|    | | | O |_______|
'-|  |----|    |------| |----------'

  \__/    \____/       O	--Side
 MicroB    HDMI     3.5mmAV

 ___
|   | |__| |__|
'-_-' |__| |__|	--Back
 ETH    USB2.0

Top Image

Bottom Image

IO Image

Tips

Use more lightweight distro like Alpine Linux or Void Linux.

If using as desktop computer use terminal applications.

Seting resolution lower then 1080p will help with performace even in framebuffer mode (pure terminal mode) You set a custom res in the config.txt file or usercfg.txt for Alpine by adding the following lines:

framebuffer_width=960
framebuffer_height=540

you can change the value to what ever you want here is 540p witch is exactly half of 1080p so it looks nice on 1080p monitors but not all play nice with this resolution.

Recommended Terminal Programs

file manger: nnn

music player: cmus

image viewers: fim fbi

editors: nano vim vi

Recommended OS's

https://alpinelinux.org/

https://voidlinux.org/

Useful info

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/guides/arm-devices/platforms.html?highlight=raspberr#raspberry-pi

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/config_txt.html

Article by X5DragonFire. Updated Nov 21, 2024.

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