Hi,
Thank you for the detailed post.
1. To be perfectly honest, the solder job looks horrible, but if you verified that all pins connect correctly andthat there are no short circuits (except for the ones between GND pins), so be it.
2. Regarding the flat cable: You say that it was delivered with the J-Link EDU correct?
This is a sounds a little bit odd to me. As far as I know all flat cables we deliver with our products
- are light grey
- have one red wire which connects both pin 1.
On the picture however, it looks like the cable is dark grey and does not have a red colored wire.
To verify if the cable is broken or working, I would suggest to check the connection between the pins of the J-Link & the board,
while the cable is plugged on both.
3. Unfortunately, it is a little bit hard to see how the cable is connected to the board.
But it looks like the nose is pointing to the top, so with pin1 on the right top side.
According to the board pictures on the SparkFun website, this would be correct.
It is hard to tell what exactly is going wrong here, but I would assume that the issue is caused by a faulty physical connection between J-Link & Board.We will order a sample of this board and create a wiki page explaining how to connect it to J-Link.
I will notify you once the article is available.
BR
Fabian