Hello Banana Pi Team and Community, I have just received a new BPI-R4 unit, but it appears to be DOA (Dead on Arrival). I am reporting a critical hardware failure in the power management section. Symptoms: No Boot / No UART: When powered on, there is absolutely no activity on the serial console (tried 115200 8N1). No u-boot messages or even early low-level boot headers. Critical Overheating: The voltage regulator IC marked Y21TC (located next to the 0V9 silk screen) gets extremely hot immediately after connecting the power supply. It is too hot to touch within 5 seconds. LED Status: The power LED lights up, but the board remains unresponsive. Troubleshooting performed: Power Supply: Tested with a high-quality 12V DC original adapter. Boot Switches: Verified positions for SD Card boot (1-1) and eMMC. Peripherals: Tested with no modules connected (no SFP, no WiFi card, no NVMe). UART: Verified with a known working 3.3V FTDI adapter. Diagnosis: It seems there is a factory short-circuit on the 0.9V power rail or a defective Y21TC buck regulator. Since this rail powers the MediaTek MT7988A core, the SoC cannot initialize. I have seen other reports of “broken hardware” with similar symptoms where the board simply doesn’t boot. Attached Photos
Request:
Could the technical team confirm if this is a known issue with a specific production batch? I am looking to process a warranty replacement with the seller.
Thank you.
I’m really quite disappointed. I wanted a powerful router with optimal performance for my home, and what I received was defective hardware. Totally disappointed.
