Prototypes ready, let’s proceed to test them.

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Communications Team

Finally, the three prototypes are ready as you can clearly see from the pictures below.

The resulting cost of each prototype resulted in 1200 euros (without VAT) higher than what was initially planned due to the global shortages of electronic components that have skyrocketed prices of some important chips. So, more donations are needed to fund these 4392 euros more (1200 x 3 + 22% VAT).

Powerboard Tyche, top side. The visible biggest gray chip is the CPU NXP T2080 Power Architecture CPU.

Now the Hardware Tests stage has started, but prior to that we still need to solder the HDMI connector that has arrived too late to be included during the production phase.

Soon, our Open Hardware motherboard called “Powerboard Tyche” will be inserted in its notebook body chassis for starting the multiple hardware tests.
Below, you can see a picture of the old dummy PCB used for testing how to fit in the notebook.

Slimbook Eclipse Notebook — The external view of the Notebook body

The notebook specifications are the following:

CHASSIS: Slimbook Eclipse notebook case 15,6”
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 DDR3L SO-DIMM slots
VIDEO: MXM3 Radeon HD Video Card (removable)
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 connector
- 2 x SATA3
- 1 x SDHC card reader
NETWORK:
- 1 x Gigabit ethernet RJ-45 connector
- WiFi connectivity
- Bluetooth connectivity
POWER: on-board battery charger and power-management

Powerboard Tyche PCB source

This work was made using Mentor Expedition and it is ready and uploaded into our repository with all reported issues fixed, including issue number 5, the last one corrected . Thanks to our collaborators we are able to export this work using Altium form so the next days we will publish it and we will try to convert it to Open Source Kicad format ( and probably loosing something in the conversion process) . In our older post we have give more details regarding the PCB sources.

Prototypes in production despite heavy chip shortages

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Communications Team

We were supposed to start the production of the laptop prototypes at the end of last September but we stumble upon skyrocketing prices, especially regarding four fundamental chips. We had no other choice but to pay those incredible much higher prices, the only alternative would have been to stop all our activities.

We are glad to inform you that this week the prototypes production has started and – finger crossed – we are expecting them to be ready in the beginning of November. The following are the four fundamental chips and their actual cost:

Marvell Sata 3 controller 88SE9235A1-NAA2C000, around 130 euro per piece + VAT, 1 per PCB, total 3 pieces
TPS544B20RVFT 4.5-V to 18-V, 20-A synchronous SWIFT™ buck converter with PMBus programmability and monitoring around 550 euro per piece + VAT, 1 per PCB, total 3 pieces
6-port, 12-lane, PCIe 2.0 Packet Switch PI7C9X2G612GP – Diodes around 250 euro per piece + VAT, 1 per PCB, total 3 pieces
Surge Suppressors 100V OV, UV, OC and Reverse Supply Protection Controller with -50mV Reverse Threshold LTC4368IDD-1#PBF around 100 euro per piece + VAT, 1 per PCB, total 3 pieces

The HDMI connectors (2041481-1) were completely impossible to find on the market in a reasonable amount of time. After long research, we could finally solve the problem thanks once again to the kind support of Slimbook, they will soon send us three connectors, one for each prototype.

Considering all chips, the cost of each prototype resulted 1200 euros higher than what was initially planned, 3600 euros more ( + 22% VAT) considering all three prototypes currently in production. You may find more information about these three prototypes in the post of July 2022 and May 2022.

As already stated in our post back in July, we are still asking you to continue donating as to help us supporting the dramatic increase in the actual costs we personally anticipated to proceed with the production. You may continue use the current campaign to donate.

Our presence for October-November in Free Software and IT events

We have planned our next speech at the LinuxDay in Milan (Italy) on the 22nd of October.

We are at NXP Technology Days in Milano on 27th October with our exposition, we are very glad for this opportunity that NXP has given us.

We hope to first show at least one prototype at the SFScon – Free Software Conference – on the 11th of November in Bolzano (Italy) in the occasion of our next speech.

PCB Design nearly complete, preparing for the next campaign aimed at working prototypes

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Communications Team

The campaign aimed at the “Fast simulations bus” is nearly complete, and we will receive the resulting PCB design before the end of 2020. As soon as we have reviewed it, we will publish it in our GitLab repository. Here a screenshot with the PCB design currently being finalized.

_{our PowerPC Notebook Motherboard design screenshot from Mentor Xpedition}

Similarly to what we did for the current campaign, the next donation campaign for financing the “Production of five working prototypes” will start as soon as the current campaign will reach its end. In coordination with ACube Systems, we fixed the cost of the five prototypes to 10.500 euros, and we aim at delivering them during late Spring 2021.

Freedesktop-sdk for PPC64 Big Endian Compiled!

We have patched freedeskop-sdk to compile perfectly on PPC64 so now we are preparing, according with Freedesktop-sdk teams, the merge requests to send to the mainline repository.

So we have successfully compiled 432 packages that it involves even the last version of go lang.

We thanks OSU Open Source Lab and OpenPower Foundation to provide us a Power9 VM with 8 cores and 16GB of RAM that permit us to compile Freedesktop-sdk for PPC64.

Now thanks to OpenPOWER@UNICAMP we have a Power8 VM to recompile freedesktop-sdk for PPC64 in Continuous Integration for gitlab freedesktop-sdk pipeline.

As Flatpak binary is running on Debian 10 PPC64 Big Endian and need the Freedesktop-dsk layer to prepare the flatpak packages starting from hundreds of manifests, now we are a step closer to see flatpak packages prepared for PPC64 .

Eureka! Here we have the Board layout! 15 days to donate 3660 euro left.

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Roberto Innocenti

We are happy to share to all the donors and followers the Board Layout of our PPC64 Notebook Motherboard!!!

The design of our board layout is meant to fit inside the Slimbook Eclipse body. The PCB Design which is currently being worked on using Mentor Xpedition.

In September 2020 we have published on our gitlab repository the Orcad source file with the latest version (v0.6) of the Electrical Schematics, you can go more deep on these board layout starting from the Orcad source.

Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Board Layout for Slimbook Eclipse Body – TOP

Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Board Layout for Slimbook Eclipse Body – BOTTOM

Download our Board Layout

The tentative deadline for Phase1B is 2th November so there are two weeks left to donate the remaining 3660 euros. If we will reach the goal, the PCB with SI bus simulation should be ready by the end of November.

In this case in December 2020 we will work on production of the Prototypes together with the Prototypes Donation Campaign.

We have to give a name to the motherboard, suggestions still remain open few days more on our forum

The PCB design Donation Campaign has started!

Posted on October 12, 2019 by Communications Team

This long awaited campaign finally begins!

Few days ago we announced that Slimbook will provide the enclosure we need for our Open Hardware PowerPC notebook. In addition to that, we have published in our repository the pdf containing the new version of the schematics. Further updates will arrive during the following days ( the Orcad source files will be available during October)