The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced that shipments of the $35 computer that went on sale at the end of last month have been delayed due to a manufacturing hiccup. The factory where the devices are produced accidentally installed the wrong type of Ethernet jack onto the PCB, effectively rendering the port useless.
The foundation specified to the manufacturer that the computers must have network jacks with magnetic components. The manufacturer accidentally substituted the component and soldered in non-magnetic jacks. As such, all of the jacks will need to be replaced before the computers can be shipped out to customers.
In a post on the foundation's blog, a volunteer for the foundation says the company has known about the issue for several days but wanted to test other components before making the news public. Fortunately for buyers, it's a very minor problem to fix (desolder the bad jack and solder on a new one) and the factory is nearly done with the first set of boards.
Subsequent boards could see a small delay as the foundation works at a feverish pace to source the correct magnetic jacks for additional builds. Partners at Element 14/Premier Farnell and RS Components are said to be helping with the search to expedite the process.
The Raspberry Pi was the talk of the town a week or so ago when the $35 Linux-based micro PC finally went on sale. The entire production run sold out almost instantly with one distributor claiming orders were coming in at 700 per second and demand was 20 times greater than the supply on hand.