Orcad source of Electrical Schematic v0.6 published and other news

Finally we have published on our gitlab repository the Orcad source file with the latest version (v0.6) of the Electrical Schematics.

This file is at base of the PCB Design which is currently being worked on using Mentor Xpedition. The previous version of the schematics required some updates in order to accommodate minor changes to match the Slimbook chassis internal spaces. In addition, the schematics are now compatible with the I/O expansion board and the position of the external ports found on the “Elipse” chassis model, that was kindly provided by Slimbook.

After achieving the goal of Phase 1A (thank you all!!), we have just started Phase 1B of the donation campaign targeting the “Fast SI bus simulations”, in other words, an in-depth analysis of the integrity of signals of the PCB that came out from the previous campaign.

After discussing with the engineers currently working on the PCB, we were told that publishing an incomplete and potentially buggy PCB does not have much sense, as there might be major problems that will be solved after carrying out the SI bus simulations. At the end of these long discussions, we agreed on publishing the PCB only after reaching the end of Phase 1B, when all checks will be done.

At this point we cannot fix a deadline for publishing the PCB, as the end of the work on the PCB largely depends on when we will reach the goal of Phase 1B donation campaign and when the SI simulation will help solve all electrical problems that may come up.

The tentative deadline for Phase1B is 16th October so there are two weeks left to donate the remaining 4000 euros (around 4700 USD). If we will reach the goal, the PCB with SI bus simulation should be ready by the end of November .

Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe 27 Oct 2020

Ready to Switch to Open Hardware GNU/Linux PowerPC Laptop?
On the 27th October at 19.30 pm GMT at “Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe”

Why today is possible to switch to a Open Hardware GNU/Linux PowerPC Laptop? As not profit association based only on volunteers I share the steps of our experience on design the eletrical schematics and the PCB of the Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook. Why we have choose the CERN Source Hardware License, and why we are ready for the OSHWA Certification process. How we have solved the problem to have the body of the laptop even for a small production in a non standardized and non-modular world of Notebook Chassis. Why thanks to FOSS its possible ( but not necessary simple) to have an OS and applications run in a today less Common Architecture in Consumer market, like Power Architecture ( PPC64) Big Endian. Good practice of writing open source codes not Endian Dependent its important to run GNU/Linux applications on every CPU Architecture. Our experience finding code written only for little-endian that we need that run on big-endian CPU.

Video and Slides of our speak at the
OpenPOWER Summit NA 15 Sept 2020

Slides of the speak

Compile the
Freedesktop-sdk for PPC64 Big Endian

We invite people to collaborate to solve Freedesktop-sdk Issues listed below to be able to compile on PPC64 Big Endian. The errors are mainly related to Python BuildStream infrastructure configuration than handles all the build system.

sdl2-ttf

error during package configuration phase, error on log:

checking for SDL – version >= 2.0.8… no
*** Could not run SDL test program, checking why…
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means SDL was incorrectly installed
*** or that you have moved SDL since it was installed. In the latter case, you
*** may want to edit the sdl2-config script: /usr/bin/sdl2-config
configure: error: *** SDL version 2.0.8 not found!
[00:00:15] FAILURE components/sdl2-ttf.bst: Running configure-commands
[00:03:21] FAILURE components/sdl2-ttf.bst: Command ‘export NOCONFIGURE=1;

ffmpeg-full-ffmpeg

Error during package building configuration. Error:

ERROR: sdl2 requested but not found

If you think configure made a mistake, make sure you are using the latest
version from Git. If the latest version fails, report the problem to the
ffmpeg-user@ffmpeg.org mailing list or IRC #ffmpeg on irc.freenode.net.
Include the log file “ffbuild/config.log” produced by configure as this will help
solve the problem.
[00:00:50] FAILURE extensions/ffmpeg-full/ffmpeg.bst: Running configure-commands
[00:04:03] FAILURE extensions/ffmpeg-full/ffmpeg.bst: Command ‘./configure –prefix=”/usr/lib/powerpc64-linux-gnu/ffmpeg” \

mesa-git-mesa

Error during package building configuration.
Error (not from the top of logfile):

[…] Looking for a fallback subproject for the dependency llvm\ meson.build:1423:2: ERROR: Subproject directory not found and llvm.wrap file not found

New version of ArcticFox for PPC64

Thanks to the work by Riccardo Mottola on patching ArcticFox, we now have a new release of this useful web browser available for download from our Debian repository for the PPC64 Big Endian platform.

Below a screenshot of ArcticFox working very well on the NXP T2080RDB board that has the same CPU we selected for our laptop project and is running on top of the latest Linux kernel (v5.8.11). In addition to a better rendering of web pages, WebGL and YouTube videos works fine, leading to a pleasant experience while surfing the web. Still, we do not have a performing JavaScript engine, which cause a serious impact on any site making heavy use of it.

We all hope that the situation with web browser will improve, and for example we all hope that the people working on porting Chromium to PowerPC Big Endian will soon find more people to help reaching the their goal.

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