Last week, the $35 version of the Linux-based Raspberry Pi PCs finally went on sale after months of development. The first units immediately sold out, as one might have expected. However, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has now announced via its blog that it has discovered a hardware issue in the first batch of PCs.
According to the blog site, the specific problem was due to an accidental parts substitution at the PC"s factory:
... specifically, where we’d specified jacks with integrated magnetics in the BOM and schematics, the factory soldered in non-magnetic jacks. No magnetics means no network connection. We’ve known about this for four days now, but we haven’t been able to tell you about it because it meant we had to do some further tests to make sure that nothing else was affected.
This has caused a delay in the first shipment of the Raspberry Pi PCs as the factory works to replace the jacks with the correct magnetic version. The blog site states that the factory is almost done with this procedure and as a result the people who ordered the first units will still receive them. However, later production runs could be delayed slightly as the company tries to find more magnetic jacks.