I bought one of these devices long time ago, and they work flawlessly. This device is made by Yanling, and these guys are top quality Chinese brand. I want to upgrade to new Protectli device, but i noticed they no longer have Yanling logo on PCB which makes me wonder who is the manufacturer. I would appreciate if someone can confirm if the latest Protectli hardware is made by Yanling or someone else. I doubt Protectli themselves would share such information.
If you look at images of the newer vaults, they have the Protectli logo silk screened on the motherboard. Product offerings from Yanling appear to be similar in design.
I suspect Protectli is still using the same contract manufacturer, but customizes the features for their specific market. Sadly, Protectli seems to have removed the RJ45 COM port from newer products, which means you cannot connect up a Garmin GPS puck with PPS to achieve usec level NTP offset/jitter. Something I pointed out to Brent Cowing, but they still don’t seem to get it.
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I have seen the images, but when it comes to PCB, i cant really tell. I see the similarities in the case design, but thats just the case. PCB could be sourced from elsewhere and that worries me. Early Protectli models had issues with their boards dying. Then, they switched to Yangling, and those machines were solid. I just want to make sure i get the same level of quality. If they switched their PCB vendor, i will just order straight from Yanling.
I wish the more modern Yanling devices had at least 2x M.2 2280 slots. I guess that’s my only beef. I like installing pfsense with zfs mirrored over 2 devices.