LAN/NIC problem

[amc2012]

Yeah.. it's pretty bad.  Mine is much the same.  It looked like 2 pins were shorted, but it was just some gunky waxy stuff between them.

Would Pine64 replace these defective boards?  Obviously it's only some of them that have this issue.

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I opened a support ticket with them to see if they would just replace the board.

If they only had to replace boards for the number of people here on this forum that are having issues, I'd hope it wouldn't be too much of a burden. I understand this was a Kickstarter project and all.

I'd even be willing to fork over another $30 or whatever as long as I could make sure I didn't get another defective unit.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Yeah.. it's pretty bad.  Mine is much the same.  It looked like 2 pins were shorted, but it was just some gunky waxy stuff between them.

Would Pine64 replace these defective boards?  Obviously it's only some of them that have this issue.

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I opened a support ticket with them to see if they would just replace the board.

If they only had to replace boards for the number of people here on this forum that are having issues, I'd hope it wouldn't be too much of a burden. I understand this was a Kickstarter project and all.

I'd even be willing to fork over another $30 or whatever as long as I could make sure I didn't get another defective unit.

It may be totally nuts, but I've needed a new soldering station for a while now... so I'm buying a new one with thermistat and heat gun. I'm planning to reflow the RTL 8211E as well all the other components on that end of the board... what the hell... its only $29 dollars, right?

[longsleep]

I made a picture of two Pine64 boards a while ago. See https://www.stdin.xyz/2016/03/23/arm-board-party/ (there is a high res link at the bottom). Is it just me or do mine look better?

[amc2012]

I made a picture of two Pine64 boards a while ago. See https://www.stdin.xyz/2016/03/23/arm-board-party/ (there is a high res link at the bottom). Is it just me or do mine look better?

I don't think so, at least as much as I can tell by zooming in on your pics. On the left-hand PINE, take a look at the right side soldering points on the RTL chip. Looks pretty bad to me. The right board looks better.

Meanwhile, look at how relatively clean the ODroid board is, and the LAN chip on the Pi as well. Very distinct, clean lines. Big difference between those and the PINE boards from what I can see as much as I can zoom in (on the hi-res photo).

[jandvs]

It still looks pretty messy around that RTL chip. Did you remove a bunch of components from that right hand one? A lot of them are missing.. I also notice the right hand one has a few different (thought i assume equivalent) components than the one in the middle.

[longsleep]

It still looks pretty messy around that RTL chip.  Did you remove a bunch of components from that right hand one?  A lot of them are missing..  I also notice the right  hand one has a few different (thought i assume equivalent) components than the one in the middle.

Right one in that picture is a Pine64 (without the plus). The one one the left is the early developer example which has some manual soldering but works completely fine with gigabit LAN.

[cdslashetc]

The one that I have that's defective is my Kickstarter reward. All 4 that I ordered from the Store work fine, but that might not be true for everyone. Would the Store have better recourse for returns? I'm guessing they might still be overwhelmed.

I'm going to try some CAT7 cables for the heck of it but not expecting that to make a difference.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[jandvs]

No reply yet from my support ticket. Guess they are pretty busy.

[cdslashetc]

The crosstalk is ON THE BOARD. If you improve SNR getting into the traces on the PCB it may improve just enough to get it to work.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

No doubt.   There is an array of caps and resistors on the board near the RTL8211E chip; and lots of cold solder joints on the ones on my three boards. There are differences in these devices between the three boards... and some of the 000 values (devices that look like a resistor, but have zero ohms) are soldered straight across on one of my boards with cold solder joints !  I honestly think the problem is a cap or solder problem, if not on the RTL8211E chip itself, perhaps on the 'mods' field of resistors and caps near the 8211E.  

If there were cross-talk on the board itself...   what is your test procedure, and what is your solution?  Do you have some empirical test data to share ?

I say it's on the board since it doesn't make sense that the crosstalk problem would be on the cable if it's up to spec, exception being if the NIC is out of spec and overdriving the signal, but that wouldn't be the cable's fault. I'm getting ready to try some 1 ft CAT7 cables that arrived yesterday, these are STP of course rather than UTP so if there's overdrive could help with that, they have grounded boots may try tying to a common ground.

At my previous job working on a traffic management network I had access to very nice Tektronix oscilloscope designed for datacomm but not at my current job. But I almost forgot I have PocketEthernet--it's a bit buggy but hard to beat the price for what it does. Not sure what info it will give me, will give it a shot once it's finished charging.

[jandvs]

Still no response on my support ticket. So I sent an email to support@pine64.org to see if that helps.