Magjacks

It looks like there is going to be a slight delay in with the Raspberry Pi boards, according to their blog there has been a slight manufacturing error that has caused the first batch to need a part replacing in the factory and there may be a slight delay in later batches being built by Element 14 and RS Electronics as they source an alternative component.

They say the problem is a is an non-magnetic network connector was used where they had specified a magnetic one and the slight difference is enough to stop the network connection working

This is because of a hardware parts substitution that was made in the factory by accident: specifically, where we’d specified jacks with integrated magnetics in the BOM and schematics, the factory soldered in non-magnetic jacks. No magnets means no network connection.

Very detailed stuff and hopefully there won’t be to much of a delay

Happily, it’s a very minor problem to fix (desolder the dud jack/solder on a new one), and the factory is nearly done working on replacing them on the first set of boards. This means that the first tranche of boards should still go out to customers as we were expecting. There may now be a slight delay in later batches if there’s a problem sourcing enough magnetic jacks (we’ve got teams hunting them down already); all the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out not to be the correct part, so we’re having to start again and move through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can. Our partners at Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Electronics are working hard to help us cater for this, and to expedite supply of the Raspberry Pi.

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