Solder bridges on SATA pins

#1

I purchased 2x QUAD SATA hats for the rPi4. I’ve been struggling with the SATA drives randomly dropping out (not visible on lsblk) on boot or after a period of time. On browsing the forums, I noticed that there have been some issues with solder bridges on some of the SATA pins, so I took macro photos of both of my boards. On close inspection, I noticed that both of the boards I have purchased have one or more solder bridges. I have confirmed these bridges using a continuity test with a multimeter.
Board 1:

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Board 2:
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Am I just unfortunate to have both boards purchased to have these issues?
Unfortunately, my soldering skills are not good enough to be able to fix these bridges and they are rendering the product useless…
For reference, my order number is Order #6195-ON

#2

Also, it might be worth mentioning, these are RA005-Q(D)F4-v1.3 2020-05-13 boards

#3

@setq perhaps you can help here? I have emailed your support email address, but no-one is responding.

#4

Hi, we just sent a reply to you by mail. Sorry for the delay - we are still in the national holiday break.

#5

Hi. Sorry - I didn’t realise. I have replied via email, but I’ll cross-post here. Please reply whichever way is better for you:

I have gone ahead and am now using the second board. As you say, it seems to be working fine even with the pins bridged.

I actually went ahead and reflowed the solder on the first board (with the bridge between 5-6). I still have continuity between some of the pins, but perhaps that is OK. I have compared this continuity with the other SATA connectors and it seems the same.

Could you let me know which pins should have direct connections and I will double check. It is clear from my soldering that I still have solder bridges between:

  • pins [1,2,3]

  • pins [7,8,9].

It seems that on ALL of the SATA connectors, I have direct connections between:

  • pins [1,2,3]

  • pins [4,5,6]

  • pins [7,8,9]

  • pins [13,14,15]

So it might be that everything is now OK and I can go ahead and use the board? It seems these pins should be bridges anyway. My only concern would be pins 1,2, and 3

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#6

@hampycalc

Hi. The picture you uploaded does a good job of showing that some pins should be together.

  • pins [1, 2, 3]
  • pins [4, 5, 6]
  • pins [7, 8, 9]
  • pins [10, 11, 12]
  • pins [13, 14, 15]