Anyone one received raspberry pi rev B 512MB  Made in China and how about its Production Quality?

Soldered holes is normal (or acceptable) if it is the long set of holes labelled P2/P3.

As far as I am aware, hardly anyone will ever have access to JTAG tools to connect there.

The factory may have been told to allow solder on that set of ports as part of the wave soldering screen,

since it is not used by users.

The small set near P1 (closest to the "Made in China" label ideally should not be covered in solder,

but only affects you if you were planning to solder something there.

For those that are planning to solder a connector there, the solder can be manually removed.

Personally I would not return a device for that reason, but not everyone is familiar with solder removal

methods, so possibly the procedure may be difficult for some if all 8 of those holes are plugged up.

seems to be a heep more solder on the china ones compaired to the UK version, just finished soldering my Pi Cobbler(first ever solder project) and i too have blobs on pins but i will say when my RPI arrived it made a huge differance to actually see something that was made in the UK rather than from china,

long and the short of it, so glad my RPI is British and i'm crap at soldering

EDIT: zidane1980 i notice that your "made in china) is a sticker, have you tried removing the "Sticker" to see what it says under it?

I have one that seems to have the same problem that Ron Niessen is experiencing.

I'm in USA, and I received 2 units 3 days ago. One is just fine, but the other crashes after a short period of operation. (Between 1 and 10 minutes.)

When it crashes, my HDMI display shows a "no signal" message, and all of the RPi indicator LEDs extinguish except for PWR. It takes a power cycle to bring it back to life.

The crash seems to come more quickly if I'm running X.

For the voltage measurements across TP1-TP2, the bad unit seems to settle at about 4.79, while the good one settles at about 4.83 after booting.

While watching the DMM during boot, I did see measurements as low as 4.59 on the bad one, but never below 4.7 on the good one. However, these readings might not mean much because of the meter's sampling and averaging rates with respect to the rapidly changing measured value.

When I use the other unit with the exact same connections, power supplies, and SD card, it has no such problem, and has run all night a couple of times.

(Wheezy has some memory leaks somewhere, but that's a different issue.)

I have not tried the frozen rhubarb, though. (Raspberry-Rhubarb Pi(e), anyone?)

The vitals from the bad unit:

serial 5b5e497a

date: 1236

revison: 000f

bottom label: E4612RS2V13B1.0

This one is also made in China.

BTW, the good one is also made in China, date code 1238.

I requested an RMA on the website yesterday, so I hope the exange will be easy.

Edit: I don't see any obvious production quality issues on either of mine. On both units, 3 of the P5 holes are filled with solder, and all of the P2 holes are filled. But I don't know how this was specified for production.

John Burt wrote:

 

When I use the other unit with the exact same connections, power supplies, and SD card, it has no such problem, and has run all night a couple of times.

Just a datapoint, for an older, original version, made in china board:

root@raspberry-pi:~# uptime

11:22:27 up 62 days, 16:19,  3 users,  load average: 0.16, 0.05, 0.06

I'm not using the new turbo-mode firmware or kernel, but as it originated as Arch it's overclocked to 800Mhz anyway. TP1-TP2 is 5.00v as I'm supplying power via P1. I also have a load of I2C sensors and stuff hanging off it and it's not had a problem.

got one from china, has the P5 holes filled (the four holes closest to the outside edge).  my multimeter has gone walkabout so i can't check voltages, but it has crashed repeatedly when running xmbc, running temp 120-153 while it is on.  i do not know how much of a problem this is, but i hope someone would enlighten me if it is.

I have exactly the same problem with a Pi that I ordered from Newark in late November. It is made in China, has some unpopulated component holes filled with solder. Otherwise it looks fine even under a microscope. I tested multiple power supplies, monitored them on a scope under load using advanced trigger etc, no problems there. When the Pi randomly crashes the screen goes blank, all the time the power LED is still lit. Sometimes the Flash LED is lit. I bypassed the polyfuse by connecting 5.00VDC between test points 1 and 2. Same behavior. Tried reflashing etc. I am going to return it now. Hopefully I can get a new one in a reasonable amount of time.

AZ

Bit miffed myself. got my Pi from "the Other Place", put sd card in, turned it over to put in the case, card fell out. Realised the card socket was faulty. Back to RS for replacement, after a month of waiting for warranty return, got another - also Chinese - one, exactly same problem.
Nonetheless, try to fit it into RS white case. No joy, all connector holes misaligned, the SD hole looked like it'd been chewed out by rats*.
Oh, well, I guess I'll find a REAL SD socket, and solder it in myself.
I really wanted it to try on this project: http://www.ubioulu.fi/sites/default/files/UbiCity_Herneoja_090502.pdf
They're using big 100 W+ Windows PC's inside, and with research, I reckon I could get all on a Pi. Time's running out, tourist season in a couple of months. Being unemployed, I reckon I've time to 'fiddle'....

(works fine with SD held in with a rubber band and a clothes peg. looks funny, but it's a lovely machine!

* I reckon the case manufacturers used my previous Engineering Managers method of manufacturing....
"Measure it with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, then hew it out with a blunt axe"

Just to let everyone know as of March 15, 2013 all of our Raspberry Pi's are being manufactured in the UK...here is a link to the story from the Inquirer .

Dave,

  One of the interesting points in that article is that Element14 now has someone

(Claire Doyle) with the title: "global head of Raspberry Pi at Element14", who is

apparently replacing Mike Buffham (global head of EDE at Premier Farnell) as the

main press point of contact for RPi issues.  Perhaps Ms. Doyle could be invited to

participate occasionally in E14's RPi discussion group, given her interest in RPi.

The article isn't clear as to whether the shutdown of E14's China RPi factories was

accompanied by a corresponding increase in the production rate at the Wales factory.

Greetings,  I have a RevB board (made in the UK - smile) and the SD Card Socket broke on it.  What is the recommended replacement part so I can make it operational again?  And I'd be glad to upgrade the socket to a sturdier one.

thanks,

--joe