2 out of 5 RPis broken in my orders

[quackor]

I've bought five RPis from Adafruit so far and I love the store. However in my last order of four units, two turned out broken - they simply stop responding to input after a while (1-5 min of usage usually), and disappear from the network (if you connected them to LAN or WiFi). I have the issue with one of the RPis I have on hang, bu I've bought these as gifts and found out from family I sent it to as a holiday gift that they encountered the same problem.
Bottom line is the units turned out unusable and my attempts to contact adafruit about this have been met with "post on our support forum" but I have to admit I fail to see how this is related. What am I supposed to do? Please advise.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Hi, As it states on our contact page: "Our engineers will answer questions, troubleshoot, handle replacements/returns and assist you 24/7 in the Adafruit customer support forums."

What are you using to power these RPi's?

[quackor]

Hi, thanks for a response. I must have missed that line... why even have other forms of contacting? A phone that instructs me to write an e-mail, that then instructs me to post on forums? There must be a better way...
I was using the kit-included power supply plugged into a wall socket. Later when troubleshooting, I tried different cables, supplying power from a PC, and getting a 2 Amp power supply. The behavior of the Pis remained the same. In most cases "normal" operation for 1-5 minutes, then freeze. It didn't seem to matter how many peripherals are plugged into it.
Haven't observed similar issues with other Pis.

[adafruit]

Connect the Pi to our 5.25V power adapter, only plug in a keyboard and monitor. how do you know its 'freezing'? what are you doing when it freezes? are you running X or just command line? we need more details to diagnose the problem. all Pi's we stock come direct from the factories, we do not make or manufacture them.

[quackor]

I tried the setup you described. The RPi will function for a few minutes (sometimes not much more than one min) and then stop responding to keyboard input even though the display will still show whatever was on the screen "last". Only the red LED on RPi is on, non-blinknig. The only way to proceed is to pull the power.

[quackor]

It doesn't seem to matter whether I run startx or stay in command line.

[quackor]

Oh yea, and sometimes USB errors show up, even if no USB network card is connected it seems the built-in network card is connected through the USB controller.

[adafruit]

can you post up what these USB errors are? that could help debug the problem!

[quackor]

Sorry for the delay, I "ran" the following tests on one of the RPis as the symptoms are the same for both:

1. Monitor only: Screen just sitting on login, after a minute or so only PWR led remains on. Plugging in input like mouse/keyboard doesn't do anything.

2. Monitor+ethernet cable: Screen sitting on login, showing lan ip .XXX after less than a minute, only PWR led is on. The device is actually not on the network (ssh / ping attempts come up "unreachable")
Note that the pi still got to login screen after this screenshot.

3. Monitor+usb wifi+usb keyboard/mouse: errors visible at boot, pi gets to login screen but then only PWR led stays on and the device is unresponsive

4. Monitor+ethernet cable+usb keyboard: got to login no errors, logged in using keyboard, after ~15 seconds of "idling" all leds went off except for PWR and the pi didn't respond to keyboard input. After another 5-10 seconds the leds momentarily started blinking again for about three seconds during which I could type again. Then back to PWR-only non-responsiveness forever.

All the components (wifi card, keyboard/mouse combo, keyboard) I used in this test work fine with the "working" RPi units I have.

[adafruit]

Hmm, how about a different USB cable? we're trying to solve the problem in case it -isnt- the Pi

[quackor]

I've actually described trying various USB cables and power supplies. Since this happened to two units, and the behavior is a bit unpredictable, I researched the subject and looked for solutions to similar problems online. I read about the need for different cables, I even purchased another power supply. If it involves trying another type/unit of anything that plugs into the pi - I tried it

[svinzant]

Did you at any time ever have the "low-profile microSD card adapter" inserted into the RPi then switch back to a "regular" microSD card adapter?
Did you try a different microSD card altogether?

[adafruit]

I've actually described trying various USB cables and power supplies. Since this happened to two units, and the behavior is a bit unpredictable, I researched the subject and looked for solutions to similar problems online. I read about the need for different cables, I even purchased another power supply. If it involves trying another type/unit of anything that plugs into the pi - I tried it

OK we've officially run out of ideas - hopefully its just really bad luck on your part email support@adafruit with a link to this thread to get 2 more Pis