Hi Steven,
To answer your second question. I believe what happened is that when the station powered on there was a bug that prevented the communication protocol between the station and the soldering iron from completing correctly. In this instance the station does not recognize that the soldering iron was plugged into the port. I would try unplugging the soldering iron and plugging it back into the same port. If that station port continues to not recognize the soldering iron you can try using the other port to complete any job you're actively working on before contacting our Customer Support team ([link|mailto:support@ifixit.com|support@ifixit.com|new_window=true]). They will be able to help swapping out the station. If the port has communication issues intermittently I would still swap it out so we can diagnose the problem on our end.