STE refurb/repair attempt went sideways (garbled/black screen on boot)

[veroli]

I wish i had found this earlier.
After many days and nights trying to make my network connections stable and reliable, I've narrowed down my issue to this is with my NetUSBee.
I couldn't make Sting stable at all sometimes it was working sometimes it wasnt. So i decided to to go back to basics and create a bootable hd config with just the sting drivers and set it up. Summary of troubleshooting
- Power on and boot, will ping itself but wont ping out and nothing can ping it.
- reset and boot into alternative partition with netusbe and uipv303, network comes to life and i can use the browser on my pc to upload to the ST.
- reset and boot to Sting, sometimes works, unreliable.
-Variants on above include new cables, bypassing intermediate switch, bypassing homeplug and directly into router - all same results
-cleaned cartridge port same results
-dug out spare 520stfm that has yet to be recommissioned but boots fine to check if cartridge port fault, same result.
-Plug in sidecart adaptor no issues can connect to wifi network.
So by now its all pointing to the NETUsbee, and stumbled on the above topic.
So if it is reset/power on delay (as i did swap to the excellent exxos PSU, wher ei also had to implement the fix for reset)
maybe i can temporarily manually fix it.
So i powered on the ST in TOS 2.06 gave it a 3 seconds, plugged in the netusbee and did a soft reset.
Success the netsusbe wotks with sting every time with this method. Interestingly it nearly always works with uipv303 without delay and plug in must kick start the network stack somehow.
Clearly this isnt ideal, but works as a short term work around, so next job, immplement chain-Q fix, thanks.
I should have searched a bit harder and more thoroughly, many hours wasting booting and reimaging sd cards but all a learning experience.