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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has come out and said that the reason for the delay in getting the mini-marvels into your hands is because the factory manufacturing them screwed up. It bunged a dud network port onto the first batch of boards.
Apparently the Pi Foundation specified a magnetic network jack in the schematics, which the factory substituted by accident for the non-magnetic variety. The result was a duff Ethernet port (who knew?), which couldn’t provide a network connection – not great if you’re attempting to use the Pi for anything internet related.
The good news is that it’s a simple case of unsoldering the non-magnetic jacks and bunging a new magnetic one in there (hooray for naked circuit boards). The bad news is that there’s a possibility the Foundation will suffer issues sourcing enough magnetic jacks for the new batches, so there might be a further delay unless some turn up quick-smart.
When the Element14 guys came in to see us they said the perfectionists at the Foundation were handing the first couple of runs of manufacturing to capture this very thing, and it seems it’s a good job they did. Let’s just hope the Foundation can source those jacks and get more Pis made pronto, before you’ve crawled up the wall in anticipation. [Raspberry Pi]
Thanks Darrell!
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This is what kind of worries me with this; will they have the clout (Financial, reputational or otherwise) to make sure that they get what they want/need over the next few years?
I really hope they do… I’d like to purchase one (Once they’ve had time to run in the wild etc) and I think it’s a really worthwhile project.
I reckon the very nature of the product should mean that yes, they’ll get there way. Especially when Element14 and others get in on the manufacturing etc. They certainly have the clout, even if the Raspberry Pi Foundation doesn’t.
This doesn’t surprise me as I’ve heard quite a few stories about Chinese manufacturers substituting components without bothering to tell the customer.