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 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.

€5,630.56 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!

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.

December 2021 updates – facing electronic components shortages

Posted on December 31, 2021 by Communications Team

At the beginning of December 2021 we received an update about the required electronic components that are still missing. We have a total number of 22 missing components, and some of them are present on the board multiple times such as the MOSFET (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET).

Below a detailed list of the missing components in more pieces:

7 per pcb MOSFET – DMN3730U-7 N 750mA 30V POWER MOS – Diodes

9 per pcb Trans MOSFET – SI4925DY P-CH 30V 5.3A 8-Pin SOIC – ON SEMICONDUCTOR

4 per pcb Field Effect Transistor –NDC7002N MOSFET 2N-CH 50V 0.51A SSOT6 – ON SEMICONDUCTOR

3 per pcb IRLML6346TRPBF – N-Channel 30 V 3.4A (Ta) 1.3W (Ta) – Infineon Technologies

2 per pcb 403C11A24M00000 24 MHz ±10ppm Crystal 10pF 60 Ohms 4-SMD

We have in the missed components even few bigger chip in the list from the more expensive and complex

Marvell 88SE9235 Sata3 controller (Two-Lane PCIe 2.0 to Four-Port 6 Gbps SATA I/O Controller)
Lattice LCMXO256C-5TN100C FPGA – series Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) LUTS 78 I/O
MICROCHIP USB2514B-AEZC I/O Controller Interface IC HI-PERFORM LW PWR SM FOOT USB 2.0 HUB
NXP Semiconductors PCAL6524HEAZ Interface – I/O Expanders PCAL6524HE

The other missed components:

MPN	REFERENCE
BAS70LT1G	D8
B340B-13-F	D12
MBR140SFT1G	D15
DM3AT-SF-PEJM5(40)	J2
DF13E-40DP-1.25V(51)	J20
SLC1175-271MEB	L58
BSR17A	Q9
S25FL256SAGMFI000	U9
AT24C256C-SSHL-B	U30
FDC6331L	U54
TPS544C20RVFT	U65
LTC4368CDD-1#PBF	U81

While ACube Systems is looking for 22 missing components contacting various distributors, we at the Power Progress Community, are trying to help searching these components. The main problem we are facing is not finding each component, the problem is the estimated delivery we are facing that most times is six month or more. For this reason we are evaluating to replace some of the components in order to get a more reasonable delivery time. In case you want to help out carrying out this task, you can the effort and conatct us.

QEMU at full speed with KVM on the NXP T2080 CPU

Thanks to Fabiano Rosas, Cédric Le Goater and Zoltan Balaton (see discussion at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-ppc/2021-12/msg00231.html) it is now possible to launch virtual machines at nearly native speed with QEMU on our NXP T2080RDB development kit, that mount exactly the same CPU as in our laptop.

This great achievement is possible thanks to the support of KVM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine) that allows the virtual machine to directly use the CPU without the need to spend time emulating it.

KVM support for PowerPC Book3e e6500 CPUs will be first introduced starting with the linux kernel 5.16+ and with the next version of QEMU, most probably v7.0. If you want to try it now, you should get the release candidate of the kernel 5.16 and compile QEMU yourself from the GIT master branch

We successfully compiled the upcoming kernel and QEMU and then tested some virtual machines running Linux for PowerPC 64 bit in Big Endian mode. Below you can see a screenshot of QEMU running three virtual machines with KVM activated. The host system is our NXP T2080RDB devkit that runs Debian SID PPC64, then there is a VM with Debian SID PPC64 (bottom-right), then OpenSUSE Tumbleweed PPC64 (bottom-left), and finally VOID Linux PPC64 (top-right).

Please note that the KVM support to the e6500 PowerPC family is still in progress, so it may need some tweaking before it may be considered reliable.