ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi everyone. I bought a LOLIN NOdeMCU board from an ebay seller about a week ago. It has ver0.1 written on the front of the board although it was sold as a V3. I am having difficulties connecting it to a computer where my computer will recognize the serial port. It uses one of these CH340 chips.
When I got it I went through about 3 usb cables before I found one that worked.
Now none of my USB cables work and don't connect UNLESS it is put into FLASH mode.
I found I can remedy the problem if I use it in conjunction with a powered USB port.
Do all of these boards require a powered USB hub for them to be recognized as a serial port?
Any help appreciated. This is DOING MY BRAIN IN!

I have 2 of these boards myself and I am having issues with Windows driver. Are you trying this with Linux? Seems less of an issue to me.

Couple of things to check.

Solder often these boards do not get enough solder on the chips I had one of them that the whole side lifted just by applying limited pressure got out hot air station added some more solder and reworked esp back on and connection issues don't happen.

Other thing is 340 driver once in a while comes up as a serial mouse driver which causes issues with coms in device manager in windows remove the serial mouse driver and replug and try again interesting as to why this happens but it happens to me sporadically.

Maybe one of these were your issue too?

I looked at my solder points on the ESP and I frankly don't know how they did it. I am not able to solder such a small area. I bought a kit that I was suppose to solder my ESP onto and I gave up as I couldn't keep from burning myself. Thie LoLin board seemed like a better way to go. Is there maybe a self-test that can be performed on the ESP to see if it is nominally performing?