Prototypes could arrive in late September

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Communications Team

Until today, the Prototypes campaign covered five prototypes with a goal of €11,000. We have now reduced the number of prototypes to three in order to cut costs, so the campaign goal has been updated to €9,100 — great news!

*Powerboard Tyche Desktop rendering based on the PCB design loaded for Prototype production*

Power Progress Community ODV and ACube Systems are putting our hearts into this challenge: we have signed the contract with the manufacturer to start prototype production, even though we have less than three months left to raise the remaining funds needed to cover the production costs.

All the donors who have supported this project for years — first for the Notebook prototypes, and now for the Desktop — want something tangible and functional. This is why we have signed to start prototype production, aiming to have the prototypes ready by the end of September 2026.

Our desktop design reuses a significant part of the latest (2023) version of the solid, proven source design of the NXP T2080RDB Development Kit, combined with elements of our own design — USB3, audio chip, dual RAM slots, and other features we originally defined in late 2017 for our first notebook motherboard, with additional features added in 2025 for the desktop. You can go more deep on this redesign.

In January 2026, our desktop board design was reviewed by NXP, resulting in a few fixes that allowed us to improve the quality and robustness of our design

Prototype production setup will begin after the summer holidays, starting on 24 August 2026, and we will keep you updated on progress. It is possible, though not easy, to have the prototype ready by the end of September 2026 — we are doing our best to make that happen.

Prototypes of Desktop Powerboard Tyche

Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will:put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardwareenable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-BootThe sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics SourcesOur GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

€5,156.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

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Over the past months, your support and donations have been incredibly generous, allowing us to fund the PCB design quickly and already reach a good percentage of the current donation campaign. Thanks to your generosity, we believe we can reach the goal in time.

We remain fully committed to making an open-hardware, notebook-based PowerPC machine a reality. The desktop version is the right step to let more people own, enjoy, and test software on this platform while spending less money.The notebook fork will resume once the desktop version is in production.

A closer look at our desktop motherboard

As you can see in the board block diagram below, here are some more details about the board:

High-quality audio (optical digital audio inputs and outputs, six analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound, separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity)
Two DDR3/DDR3L slots
Three PCIe connectors (one PCIe Gen3 x4 on an x16 slot for a video card, one PCIe Gen2 x4 for a secondary video card, one PCIe Gen2 x1)
I2C/UART connector
Two M.2 slots (one 80 mm, based on PCIe Gen3 x4, for the primary SSD; one 30/42/60/80 mm, based on PCIe Gen2 x4)
Two SATA2 connectors
One microSD slot
Four USB3 ports (2 rear, 2 front)
Two USB2 ports (rear)
Two Ethernet ports (allowing firewall use)

The NXP T2080 Processor include DPAA incorporating acceleration for the following functions:

Packet parsing, classification and distribution up to 24Gb/s (FMAN)
Queue management for scheduling, packet sequencing and congestion management of up to 2^24 queues (QMAN)
Hardware buffer management for buffer allocation and de-allocation with 64 buffer pools (BMAN)
ntegrated security acceleration (SEC) to 10 Gbp
Decompression/compression acceleration at up to 17.5 Gbps (DCE)
Signature detection (PME) to 10Gb/s
DPAA support of RapidIO® messaging (RMAN)

Running Debian PowerPC from 2016 with PowerPC NXP T2080 processor

Since 2016 we have been testing Debian PPC64 on our T2080RDB devkit, which was also used during 2023–2025 to test our past notebook prototypes (it broke down this year, likely due to the stress of transport), as well as on the many Mac G4/G5 machines owned by our volunteers.

We have a second T2080RDB devkit, kindly lent to us by an NXP employee over the past two years, which we have used to develop the U-Boot Radeon driver and for comparison testing against our notebook prototype board — and which will also be useful for testing the new desktop board with our JTAG debugger.

Debian 13 PowerPC installer

Thanks to Debian, in June 2026 the PPC64 and PowerPC (32-bit) Debian 13 installer was released, and we have successfully tested it on our Mac G4/G5 machines.

Debian 13 PowerPC Kernel 7.1.5 installed on PowerBook G4

Debian 13 PPC64 Kernel 7.1.5 installed on Imac G5

Debian 13 PowerPC Kernel 7.1.5 installed on PowerBook G4 768 Mb Ram

ArcticFox, how could we manage without you?

We even tested successfully the latest releasee 47.3 of ArcticFox Browser for PowerPC (32bit) oWe have also successfully tested the latest release, 47.3, of the ArcticFox browser for PowerPC (32-bit) on a G4.

Having a modern browser that runs on PowerPC is vitally important. ArcticFox runs exceptionally well on PowerPC — without it, what would we do?

If you’d like to try ArcticFox on any of its supported platforms (Mac OS X 10.6+, Linux [PowerPC, x86, amd64, ARM, MIPS], NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows XP), you can reach out directly at https://github.com/rmottola/Arctic-Fox or If you’d like to help bring ArcticFox to PowerPC you can contact us.

There are two open issues to resolve for the upcoming ArcticFox 48.0 release, both related to Big Endian compilation (required for PowerPC and PPC64):

NSS Upgrade compiles but breaks TLS

FreeBSD Fails to run and packages

15% of Donations for Prototypes production of Powerboard Tyche Desktop

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Communications Team

As of 31 May, we have completed the fundraising campaign to cover the cost of the PCB designs for our Tyche Desktop Open Hardware Powerboard. Thanks to your generous donations, we have exceeded the campaign’s target, meaning that the new campaign to produce prototypes of the board is already underway with 15% of the funds raised.

All the donors who have been supporting the project for years – first the Notebook and now the Desktop – want something tangible and functional; this is why we must continue this race against time to raise funds so that we can produce the prototypes by September 2026.

We remain absolutely committed to making an Open-Hardware Notebook-based PowerPC machine a reality. The desktop version is the right step to allow more people, spending less money, to soon own, enjoy, and test software on this Desktop version. With a few changes and reintegrating the battery part of our previous Notebook, it will give rise to the Notebook version!

Open Hardware schematics

On the 24th of April 2026 we published on our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

The meaning of our Open Hardware projects

It is so important that every country, every community needs to have people capable of designing, producing and validating electronics and software powering every building, vehicle, hospital, medical devices, school, university, aqueduct, sewage treatment, power plant, every piece of the infrastructure we depend on for our lives.

And that’s why is so important that we complete an Open Hardware Desktop designed around free software, involving students, and young, and previously young people, to be able to build the bricks of our society.

Thanks to your support, this Open Hardware Desktop first, and then the Notebook, will demonstrate in practice that a group of common people could create computers that respect our freedom.

Join us to Help on Debian PPC64 Big Endian packages

In case you have not PowerPC hardware we can give you access to the Power9 VM we have free at Open Source Lab at Oregon Stage University. thanks to the support of , so you can test and fix the package inside this VM.

More Info

Let’s stay in touch!

We have been on the Fediverse for a few years now. You can find and follow us at: hostux.social/@powerprogress. Please follow us and share our posts to spread the word. Thank you for your continued support!

We are ready for prototype production!

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Communications Team

The PCB design is finally complete, and we are officially ready for prototype production.

However, before taking the big step, we need to balance the PCB design costs:

3,050 euros at the end of April;
3,050 euros at the end of May;

To produce the first five prototypes, we need a total of around 9,000 euros. Until we have the cash flow to make this commitment with the manufacturer, we will not sign the contract to go into production.

Powerboard Tyche Desktop Electrical Schematics Design

Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will: put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardware enable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-Boot The sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics Sources Our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

€4,120.00 donated of €4,120.00 goal

Schematics are already published in pdf format on our gitlab repository

Why aren’t we publishing the PCB design yet?

We will only be able to publish the open-source design after paying the design costs and only when prototype production is underway. This is for two fundamental reasons:

Before paying, we do not own the rights to the source files.
The source files will only be considered final after physically testing the prototypes.

Furthermore, our manufacturer ACube Systems can only afford to produce the Desktop board for the first time if no one else beats them to the market. After all the hard work done to make this dream a reality, it is our duty to protect them.

A special campaign: win the historic laptop PCB!

Since the current donation flow is insufficient to cover the design costs and start production, we are exploring new ways to raise funds.

One of the ideas we are considering is a special giveaway: we will raffle off a PCB from our previous prototype (the laptop version) among all donors who contribute from now until we reach the 9,000 euro goal.

Please note: this is a “dummy” PCB (non-functional), produced solely to verify the physical dimensions of the board. It was never an operational prototype. We hope this piece of our journey’s history can motivate the community to help us cross the finish line!

T-shirts, gadgets, and the “DY Maker” spirit

We are preparing T-shirts and other gadgets dedicated to the PowerPC Notebook and Desktop projects, also linked to our association DY Maker mindset.

We collaborate with volunteers to create the opportunity to experience hands-on learning, to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving by trying to conceive, design, and produce what we need or desire. We encourage this culture from primary schools to University, with no age limit.

Soon we will ask you to vote on different options for T-shirts and gadgets. After that, we will open pre-orders for t-shirts, stickers, and much more!

Our recent events

We have been very active locally:

March 13 – Bolzano, Italy: We shared our project with electronics students at Free University of Bozen · Bolzano – Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Engineering, just as we did in Milan in May 2025. In agreement with the professors, we discussed possible university theses in collaboration with our association.
March 14 – Trento, Italy: We were hosted by Hack in Povo in collaboration with LinuxTr e nt, where we presented the history of our projects.

Desktop board specifications

Our Desktop board is a Micro ATX measuring 244 mm in height and 172 mm in width. When it comes to audio, we didn’t hold back: it features optical digital audio inputs and outputs, 6 analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound, and separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity.

Software and PCB source roadmap

Stage 1: Soon we will convert the Schematics source files from Cadence to Altium, and then to KiCad. In the meantime, there is a free viewer for Orcad sources at this official Cadence link. We also point out an interesting open project that has started importing Orcad sources directly into KiCad: OpenOrCadParser.
Stage 2: Thanks to your donations, once we have collected enough funds to balance the design and prototypes, we will merge and import the PCB source files from PADS directly into KiCad. This is now possible thanks to the brand new importers introduced in KiCad 10: learn more on the KiCad blog.

PCB Design of Desktop Powerboard Tyche

Starting from the source of the Electronic Schematics design design the PCB means prepare all physical PCB layers lanes and components disposition and connection to go in production with prototypes. Designer have take from NXP Devkit design ( 2023 version) everything is related to boot process and many parts from our Notebook design, except what is not needed for Dekstop version, like the Battery part.

€4,100.00 donated of €4,100.00 goal

Let’s stay in touch!

Schematics reviewed and published!

Posted on January 29, 2026 by Communications Team

This project has been in the public eye for several years now, working together with supporters who have backed us through the long process of creating notebook prototypes. Over the last eight months, we have focused on developing a desktop version largely redesigned to be immediately functional

As promised, the sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP. They suggested a few changes, which we have implemented. The review process cost us an additional €850, but it was worth it: we have improved our schematics and PCB design just in time for the prototypes.

Great news: NXP confirmed we can publish the schematics with an Open Hardware License! We have already uploaded the PDF version to GitLab.

GitLab Repository Powerboard Tyche Desktop Schematics

However, before publishing the raw source files, we need to convert them from the proprietary OrCAD format to KiCad to ensure everyone can use them. As such, we need collaborators to help us bridge the gap.

If you would like to reserve a production desktop board this summer, we need donations to cover €6,100 for the remaining costs of the PCB design, as well as the expenses associated with prototypes and testing in the coming months. ACube Systems will handle the production because we are a nonprofit organization not allowed to sell physical products.

We are doing the necessary work to reach production, despite the obstacles. The difficult part, the uncertainty, is behind us. Now we are missing a very simple ingredient: funds. We need to raise a few thousand euros in a window of 2-3 months. Simple, but not easy.

Join us on this journey!

Donate, tell your friends, and share our project. In order to enjoy the PowerPC motherboard later, we must all work together now by joining the donation campaign in large numbers.

Join us in this great opportunity for hands-on learning, creativity, and problem-solving as we design and produce what we desire.

If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to fill out our survey or contact us.

First PCB Desktop Layout!

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Communications Team

Today we publish here ( above) an export from PCB design of our PowerPC Desktop motherboard (based on processor NXP T2080) , you can see the motherboard top view with components and connectors, it reflect the progress on pcb design, that is going fast. Before the end of January will be completed !! In January should be defined the costs and timing for the production of the prototypes.

The dispositions of components on the board are not final.
As requested by our association members there are 4 holes 30-42-60-80 for the left M.2 connector.
The two Ethernet are one on top of the other.
There is even a digital audio output.
There are 3 PCIE connectors: 16x, 4x Open ( with space for 8x and 16x), 1x

In the mean time that is in progress the donation campaign for the schematics design we open now the donation campaign for the PCB design.

Payments we should do next days:

Schematics Design

Before 31 December we should balance the payment for the schematics design plus 850 euro needed to fill the review questionnaire asked by NXP, So we have summed the 850 euro to the running campaign for the Schematics.

Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will: put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardware enable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-Boot The sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics Sources Our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

100.00% Raised

€4,120.00 donated of €4,120.00 goal

39 Donors

Campaign has ended

PCB Design

We need to pay at beginning of January the 50% of the cost for PCB design that is around 6100 euro, so we have created the PCB design campaign that is 12500 euro ( 10000+VAT+paypal/stripe fees) .

We thanks donors and collaborators that permit us to finance everything realized until now.

We are going faster as promised, to realize a working Open Hardware PowerPC motherboard in few months , that increase rhythms of design and production, costs and ask us to increase even the rhythm of donations…

Donation is a form of collaboration so apart your one shot or recurrent donation that are welcome, we even ask you to spread all over you can our project so more potential collaborators could join our project.

On 12th December NXP confirm us that the review of our source schematics was submitted, they don’t give us any estimation on how much time they take to do the revision and to give us the permission to publish as Open Hardware the schematics source. After we will have the agreement from NXP we will publish the sources as we do usually, as we have done for our Powerboard Tyche Notebook motherboard sources.

Debian 13 installer for PPC64 and powerpc (32bit)

We are very happy that Debian ports team have published a working Debian 13 installer for PPC64 and powerpc so we have tested on PowerBook G4 and IMac G5. Please join us if you want to help on test Debian PPC64 package or if you want to test even Mint PPC

We have published on our forum how to install it.

During the last shipment of one of the Devkit at our disposal, the power supply (already replaced) and the T2080 motherboard were damaged, so we are currently unable to test Debian 13 on it.