Primo Layout PCB per Desktop!

Oggi pubblichiamo (sopra) un’estratto dal design PCB della nostra scheda madre per PowerPC Desktop (basata sul processore NXP T2080), dove trovate la visuale dall’alto della scheda madre, con componenti e connettori.
Riflette i rapidi progressi nel design del PCB che sarà completato entro la fine di gennaio!
A gennaio sapremo anche costi e tempi per la produzione dei prototipi.

  • La disposizione dei componenti sulla scheda non è definitiva.
  • Come richiesto dai membri della nostra associazione, ci sono 4 fori 30-42-60-80 per il connettore M.2 sinistro.
  • Le due porte Ethernet sono una sopra l’altra.
  • É anche dotato di un’uscita audio digitale.
  • Ha 3 connettori PCIE: 16x, 4x Open (con spazio per 8x e 16x), 1x

Mentre la campagna di donazioni per la progettazione degli schemi è ancora in corso, apriamo la campagna di donazioni per la progettazione del PCB.

PCB Design of Desktop Powerboard Tyche

UPDATE 6th April 2026

Thanks to the funds collected for the Notebook CE certification and due to the temporary stop of Notebook motherboard production the association have used 8000 euro of funds to pay in advance a part of the cost of PCB. So the total cost of the PCB Design is around 12.500 euro, but 8000 arrive from association funds.

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.

Top View Components Deskop Powerboard Tyche
SPECS

Form Factor: Micro ATX

CPU: NXP T2080, e6500 64-bit Power Architecture with Altivec technology

4 x e6500 dual-threaded cores, low-latency backside 2MB L2 cache, 16GFLOPS x core

RAM: 2 x DDR3 slots

VIDEO

PCIE3 x16 VIDEO Card 1PCIE2 x4 VIDEO Card 2

AUDIO: C-Media 8828 sound chip, audio IN and audio OUT jacks

USB: 3.0 and 2.0 ports

STORAGE:

NVM Express (NVMe)M.2 2280 connector2 x SATA21 x SDHC card reader

NETWORK:

2 x Gigabit ethernet RJ-45 connector

Donated: 17.33%
Goal: €4,500.00
17.33% raccolto
€780.56 donati
11 Donatori
44 giorni mancanti
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  • Milestones

    Phase 1: Schematics Design : started on 14.07.2025

    Phase 2: PCB Design : goal 31.01.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 3: Prototypes Production: goal 01.04.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 4: Prototypes Tests. : goal 01.06.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    The timing of milestone depend from your donation. Thanks!

  • Titolo

    Payment Methods

    Online Donation – PayPal

    Press Donate and as Payment Method select PayPal You can choose one time donations, or recurring -smaller- monthly donations ( and with others selected frequency). ( How stop paypal recurring payment )

    Online Donation – Stripe

    Press Donate and as Payment Method select Stripe You can choose one time donations, or recurring -smaller- monthly donations ( and with others selected frequency).

    Offline Donation – Bank credit transfer

    These are the bank account details for donating:

    Bank name: Banca Popolare Etica

    Bank account owner: Power Progress Community OdV

    IBAN: IT94X0501801600000012339610

    Beneficiary Bank (57)

    Code BIC/ SWIFT: ETICIT22XXX

    Banca popolare Etica SCPA Via N. Tommaseo 7, 35131 Padova (PD)

    Intermediary Bank (56A)

    Code BIC/ SWIFT: POSOIT22XXX

    Banca popolare di Sondrio

    Piazza Garibaldi 16, 23100 Sondrio (SO)

    CAUSE:“PPC notebook donation – NAME and SURNAME”

    Where the NAME and SURNAME are the same you will fill in the Donate page.

    After you have made the bank transfer press Donate and as Payment Method select Offline Donation.

    In Offline donation the recurring donations is only a declaration of intent as the system doesn’t do anything for you.

    Anonymous Donations

    When you make the donation (offline or online) you can choose to make your donation anonymous.

    Preferred payment method and TransferWise / CurrencyFair

    Our preferred payment method to receive donations (to keep commission and also your costs low) would be:

    EU donors: Bank Transfer (online or offline)Non-EU donors: Bank Transfer with services like Wise or CurrencyFair

    Titolo

    Donations are liberal and not refundable

    The Power Progress Community is a nonprofit organization established in Italy. The Italian law allow to collect liberal and not refundable donations meant to pursue the missions and projects of the association and not give back products.

    Restrictions for a nonprofit associations in Italy

    An organization like ours has to take into account the following constraints:

    A nonprofit association cannot make commercial products;The association can receive donations, but cannot refund them;The association must be coherent with its mission, and is allowed to ask for donations for their achieving the goals.

    So, what we can do to start our project is based on the points below:

    The association can have a particular goal to reach and ask donation to achieve it, but it cannot give back the money (no refunds).Donation must be altruist so, no one will receive something back for their donation.Italian law allows an association to finance an R&D for a project or activity.

    What happens if the campaign fails?

    As stated above, we will not be able to refund the donors in any case. Because of that, if the money collected is not enough to fund this research we will use it for another goal within the mission of the organization.

    Titolo

    Will all the received money be used for the research?

    Almost, as any payment platform available, either PayPal, Stripe or the Bank account transfers, have a fee applied to each donation. As non-profit organization we have inside EU 1,8%+0,35euro of commission, outside EU 2,8%+0,35 euro ( from some country we see that could arrive to 4% of commission) for paypal. In case your bank transfer is from outside EU, for us bank commission cost is high: 6 euro, so we strongly suggest to use service like Transferwise to decrease the commission cost for both.

    Open Hardware Certificaion

    As a final remark, we will try to adhere to the Open Source Hardware requirements in the design of this laptop motherboard, therefore we are strongly committed in avoiding any hardware component requiring an NDA (Not Disclosure Agreement).

    For this purpose, we have contacted many chips vendors in order to verify their agreement to distribute as Open Source Hardware our electrical schematics and PCB design obtained in this second campaign.

    Among others, NXP which is the company producing the selected CPU, has answered positively for the Powerboard Tyche Notebook that had taken from T2080RDB Revision C design, now we are waiting the level and parts that they agreed for T2080RDB Revision F, that’s the new version that we have use for the new design of Powerboard Tyche Desktop,

    The process required to achieve a fully compliant Open Hardware motherboard, was carefully analyzed by students of the Law and Policy Clinic of New York University School of Law. Thanks to their work, are clear the practical implications of the requirements for the OSWHA Open Hardware certification, and cross-checked our approach and adopted solutions with OSWHA personnel.

    An important part of being considered Open Hardware compliant (OSHWA Open Hardware certification), require that everything that is under our control and that is used to produce our motherboard, should be publicly disclosed, such as schematics, PCB, Gerber-files and all their accompanying information.

    As a consequence, most of the datasheets of the chips used in our schematics are freely downloadable, as well as the schematics and the PCB design.

    In case some of the chip vendors will ask us to remove technical details that we were not supposed to disclose, we will comply to their requests by removing the published material, but that will do not impact on our compliance to OSHWA Open Hardware certification because we could demonstrate that we strived to be as open as we could.

    We are sure that you will be satisfied by the final PCB design, and you will be proud of being one of the contributors that could make materialize the first and only Open Hardware complaint PowerPC desktop motherboard designed around GNU/Linux!!​


Progettazione schematica

Entro il 31 dicembre dovremo saldare il pagamento per la progettazione schematica, più 850 euro necessari per compilare il questionario di revisione richiesto da NXP, che abbiamo aggiunto alla campagna già in corso.

100.00% raccolto
€4,120.00 donato rispetto all’obiettivo di €4,120.00
39 Donatori
La campagna è conclusa

PCB Design

All’inizio di gennaio dovremo pagare il 50% del costo per la progettazione del PCB, pari a circa 6100 euro, per questo motivo abbiamo creato una campagna di raccolta fondi di 12500 euro (10000 + IVA + commissioni PayPal/Stripe).


Stiamo procedendo più rapidamente del previsto, per realizzare una scheda madre Open Hardware PowerPC funzionante in pochi mesi, il che aumenta i ritmi di progettazione e produzione, i costi e ci richiede di aumentare anche il ritmo delle donazioni…

La donazione è una forma di collaborazione, quindi oltre alla tua donazione una tantum o ricorrente, che è sempre ben accetta, ti chiediamo anche di diffondere il più possibile il nostro progetto, in modo che altri potenziali collaboratori possano unirsi a noi.

Il 12 dicembre NXP ci ha confermato che hanno iniziato la revisione del sorgente dei nostri schemi, ma non ci ha fornito alcuna stima sui tempi necessari per completarla e fornirci l’autorizzazione a pubblicare gli schemi originali come Open Hardware. Una volta ottenuto il consenso da parte di NXP, pubblicheremo gli schemi come facciamo di solito, come già abbiamo fatto per la nostra Powerboard Tyche: Notebook motherboard sources.


Debian 13 installer per PPC64 e powerpc (32bit)

Abbiamo scoperto con entusiasmo che il team Debian Ports ha pubblicato un installer per Debian 13 funzionante su PPC64 e powerpc, quindi lo abbiamo testato su PowerBook G4 e IMac G5. Unitevi a noi se volete aiutarci a testare i pacchetti Debian PPC64 o aiutarci a testare Mint PPC.

Debian 13 PPC64 su G5
Debian 13 PPC64 su G5

Sul nostro forum potete trovare le istruzioni per l’installazione.


Durante l’ultima spedizione di uno dei devkit a nostra disposizione, è stato danneggiato l’alimentatore (già sostituito) e la scheda madre T2080, quindi al momento non siamo in grado di testare Debian 13 sul nostro Devkit.

Scheda T2080 RDB del Devkit

Se desideri installare Debian ppc64/ppc32 sul tuo G5 o G4, potresti trovare informazioni utili nella pagina dedicata del Debian PowerPC Wiki, aggiornata dai nostri collaboratori.