Ether Dongle LED on power up?

[pk]

Night Owl -

I see the 2 places in the lower right of the smaller chip you are talking about.  They look like solder bridges to me.  I remove these by holding solderwick between the IC and the soldering iron at the solder bridge and heat it up.  The solder from the bridge should go into the solderwick.  Do not get the the solderwick on the IC leads where they solder to the PCB - you do not want to remove that solder. 

I have also seen these bridges to be tiny balls of solder that can be broken loose but it is hard to find something small enough to fit between the fine pitch of the IC leads. 

Good luck.  Let us know how it comes out.

 UPDATE:  From reading below only one is a solder bridge.  My eyes aren't as good as they use to be!!

[n1ist]

Pins 35 and 36 look like they should be connected (DGND and IOGND).  There appears to be a trace on my board between them, from the middle of one pad to the middle of the other.  I also had what appeared to be a solder ball stuck there, but it's gone now.

As for the one between 37 and 38, that should not be there.

/mike

[RJ]

yes the one should be there. as it is a trace. If the other is a bridge remove it. I had to inspect them all and I did have a few that I had to fix so I may have missed and let one through. If so sorry it was a lot of work to inspect and clean flux from all those pcbs. If we can get 500 units (never going to happen) in the coop next time we could get the cost where I can let them do the inspecting and cleaning.   

RJ

[chrisatpsu]

If we can get 500 units (never going to happen) in the coop next time we could get the cost where I can let them do the inspecting and cleaning.   

RJ

never say never..... 

[Night Owl]

Before I start going gonzo, I want to make sure which one I am going to try and remove.

In the photo below, I'm to remove the bridge marked by the red arrow and leave the one marked by the blue.  Is this correct?

Oh, and I found this on Youtube

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[RJ]

Remove the red one. the blue is OK is is suppost to be that way.

Useing solder wick will be much safer for you unless you are an old pro. Cut the wick so you have clean end then If you have a flux pen put some on the wick. Then touch the end of it on across the two pins that are bridged and apply your soldeing iron with a clean tip set to a little hotter than you normally solder then wait. It will suck it right out after it gets good and hot.

This is I think the easiest and safest for you.

RJ 

[pHoZfoRus]

Hi Night Owl,

It may be worth checking seating of chips also.  It may just be the photo, but it appears that one of the pins may be bent under (circled)?

Russell

[n1ist]

I'd reheat both; on my board, the solder ball popped free with a gental poke; I wouldn't want it to float free and short something out. 
/mike

[Night Owl]

Yay!  It looks like that did it.     The solder wick did the trick.  One quick touch of the iron removed the bridge.  Plugged the wall wart in and the green LED came on.  Ran a quick and dirty sequence through Vixen and the Express is responding.  I had pulled all the chips off to check seating also but that looked OK.  Thanks everyone!

-Nathan

[caretaker]

Decided to finish my Ether Dongle and try it out.  Flashed PIC and it seems to have flashed OK. Plug in power to board and nothing, no green light, no ether net lights.  Here is what I have done so far:
  1. Re- touched whole board
  2. Check voltages  7.93 at power header, 3.29 volts off of 3.3 reg, 5.0 volts off 5 volt reg.
  3. Double checked orientation of LED, caps, Oscillators and chips all correct.
  4. Held board up to light and checked for solder bridges on SMD chips - could see none.
  5. Tried connecting directly to PC and to router neither showed any activity.

Attached Pictures of Board 

Just need a plan to diagnose what's wrong.   

[rdebolt]

Hard to see from this angle but you might look here very closely.

[caretaker]

Hard to see from this angle but you might look here very closely.

Checked the PIC chip, no bridges that I can see when held up to light.