Moin,
Some might remember that i talked a few times about crashes of my
net5501 under heavy load or when using wlan. Eg when i switched
wlan on and did generate some traffic it didn't take more than 5 minutes
to crash the net5501.
I finaly got the time to work on this again and got my net5501
working without crashes even under heavy load and using wlan at full
power. At least not within 24h.
So, what is the problem? In order to save a couple of cents Soekris
compromised on the power supply of the net5501 (the one on the board
itself, not the wall plug), which leads to issues under certain load
conditions. Those can vary from simple bit errors over lock up of
single circuits to crashing the whole machine. The problem is actually
that obious that you can see it on the soldered PCB if you think
of looking for it. Had i checked the PCB when it first crossed
my mind that there is something wrong with the power supply it would
have saved me quite some trouble.
I'm not surprised that net5501 crashes, anymore... but rather that
it doesn't crash more often.
Can it be fixed? Not really. It's a design issue. The only way to
really fix it is to change the design and redo the boards.
If you already own a net5501, the only thing you can do is, to patch
it up until the crash probability reaches a level where you dont care
anymore. And for this you need a soldering iron and some skill using it,
as it means modifying a small pitch SMD PCB. Depending on how you use
the net5501 this means anything from an hour of soldering to a full day
or two of rework.
Soren: Next time a customer tells you that he has problems with one
of your devices, do not belittle him, do not tell him he doesn't know
what he is doing and most importantly: do not ignore him! In the very
least, there is a problem with his setup and you could make him a happy
customer if you'd help him. In the worst case, the customer might be
on some reall issue and might be able to tell you how to reproduce it.
Attila Kinali
--
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?
_______________________________________________
Soekris-tech mailing list
Soekris-tech@lists.soekris.com
http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
