is it me or is the whole header kind of crooked? as if someone yanked the ide cable off of it from an angle.

Even someone yanking the IDE cable should not cause the pins to peel up as shown in that photo. If the pin header is soldered properly, the ide cable and its crimped connector should rip completely apart before you could exert enough force to do what that photo shows.

I believe someone from Cambridge said that this problem is caused by an IDE pin header that wasn't perfectly straight to begin with (or perhaps is being warped by the heat of the flow-soldering process?) combined with not enough flowed solder and heat to make the pins truly bond to the solder.

Tony, feel free to add them to the FAQ if you like them

Done. Thank you very much for the excellent photos!

I have a Canon G2 that does some great macro shots. But, I added a BW +4 macro lens. Then, for fun I added +4, +2, and +1 Hoya macro lenses. They definitely helped focus, but the G2 does a pretty good job without them.

That is a great shot!!! I like how you can actually see the texture of the chips and header around the solder point as well. Very nice!

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Looks like I've encountered this problem too. Anybody with SMT solder experience in San Diego? I'll treat you to an Arrogant Bastard or two.

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Make sure you have the soldering done before the ales and not during.

I was having some problems with Hard Disk Not Found display and upon upening up the unit found one pin with a solder problem. Fixed that one....problem occured again..opened up the unit and upon poking and prying fount that most of the pis were able to be pulled away from the motherboard.....will have to resolder all of them

seems to me that this is a 'time' problem and that many units are experienceing this at the same time and that as the unit ages the soldering just weakens.....

It is also temperature sensitive. As the weather changes, the difference in heating / cooling the player makes it more likely to fail. There was a peak of this type of failure last year around this time as well.

....well there you go then!!!!!