Powerboard Tyche unveiled at Pianeta Amiga

This weekend, together with our friends from ACube Systems, we unveiled the Powerboard Tyche card to the public for the first time at the “Pianeta Amiga” event held in Empoli, a small town near Florence. The card was hot off the press; the company responsible for assembling the components had delivered it to Enrico Vidale of ACube less than 24 hours earlier.

During the event, several people asked us about the relationship between the PowerProgressCommunity association and ACube; the diagram below aims to clarify the situation.

Below the This is the complete features list of the board:

  • Form Factor: Micro ATX (fully compatible with most standard PC cases and power supplies on the market)
  • CPU: NXP T2080 processor, 64-bit e6500 Power architecture with Vector AltiVec technology
  • Core & Performance: 4 physical dual-threaded e6500 cores (8 logical threads), 2 MB low-latency backside L2 cache, 16 GFLOPS per core
  • RAM: 2-slot 64-bit DDR3/3L SDRAM memory controller with ECC support
  • NVMe SSD: 1x M.2 NVM Express Gen 3 slot and 1x M.2 NVM Express Gen 2 slot for ultra-high-speed solid-state drives
  • SATA: 2x SATA2 ports (Sil3132 controller) for traditional HDDs/SSDs
  • Primary Video Slot: 1x PCIe 3.0 (x4 electrical, x16 mechanical) to support modern graphics cards
  • Secondary Expansion Slots: 1x PCIe 2.0 x4 open-ended slot (mechanically compatible with x16 cards) and 1x PCIe 2.0 x1 slot
  • HD Audio: Dedicated C-Media 8828 audio chip
  • Audio I/O: Analog jacks (3×2) for Audio IN and surround/stereo Audio OUT; Digital optical and RCA inputs and outputs
  • Ethernet: 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 connectors for advanced network configurations and redundancy
  • Rear Panel USB Ports: 2x USB 3.0 + 2x USB 2.0
  • Internal USB Headers: 2x USB 3.0 headers for case front ports
  • Card Reader: 1x Integrated SDHC card reader
  • Advanced I/O / Debug: Pre-equipped for secondary diagnostic/debugging displays via a dedicated bus (SPI/GPIO) during the booting phase

Thanks to your donations, we were able to present the prototype of the board. You can continue to make donations for free by visiting

  1. 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.
    €5,305.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

What follows is an account of my participation in the event.

I am Mario Locati, a long-time enthusiast of the Amiga world and one of the founding members of the PowerProgressCommunity association. This combination of interests drove me to participate in person at the “Pianeta Amiga” event, which was held on Saturday the 26th and Sunday the 27th of September 2026 in Empoli, a small town near Florence.

Map of the Empoli area, which lies halfway between the city of Pisa to the east and Florence to the west.

I arrived in Empoli on the morning of Saturday the 26th on a train from Milan, travelling through the beautiful scenery of the Tuscan hills.

I arrive at Empoli railway station on the local train from Florence.

Empoli is a typical Tuscan town, with beautiful squares and delightful pedestrian streets that fill up in the evening with people enjoying the lovely early autumn evenings.

One of Empoli’s many squares; it looks empty here because the photo was taken very early on a Sunday morning, but on Saturday evening it was full of people strolling around until late at night.

Interestingly, nearby lies the town of “Vinci”, the birthplace of the famous Leonardo, one of the greatest Italian artists of the 16th century.

Signpost for the nearby village of ‘Vinci’, where the famous Italian artist ‘Leonardo’ was born.

The venue for Pianeta Amiga was in a suburb of Empoli. Only a part of the indoor exhibition area was dedicated to the event: it was a huge hall with wooden walls, featuring the presentation area in the centre and the various exhibitors’ tables along the sides.

This is the entrance to the venue for the 2026 edition of Pianeta Amiga.

Next to the building, there were several football pitches where the classic kids’ matches take place at the weekend. These matches were well-attended by parents and friends, busy cheering whilst enjoying a beer served by a small volunteer-run bar.

My friends from ACube Systems immediately welcomed me to their three tables. There, I finally saw the Powerboard Tyche desktop motherboard for the first time, which the whole community has worked so hard to help create. Right during this weekend, together with our friends at ACube Systems, we presented the board to the public for the very first time. The hardware was hot off the press: the company that handled the component assembly had delivered it to Enrico Vidale of ACube less than 24 hours beforehand. I must admit I held it in my hands with great emotion; after the failure of the notebook prototype, I had genuinely feared that the project might come to an end due to a lack of community support.

We have been working with Enrico Vidale (left) and Max Tretene (right), the two pillars of ACube Systems, for some time. It is only thanks to their collaboration that we have been able to produce the board prototypes.

Our friends at ACube Systems have just issued a press release, which I’d encourage you to read.

Here it is at last! The prototype circuit board is right in front of me!

Besides our board, there were various Sam460ex boards on the tables showcasing the latest software developments by ACube Systems. These include a series of drivers designed to run the hardware peripherals present on the Powerboard Tyche: the SiI3132 SATA2 controller, the NVMe SSD controller, and a brand-new driver for a wide range of Radeon board versions, which breaks away from all other existing drivers to date.

This is a screenshot of AmigaOS 4.1 running on a Sam460ex. The brand-new driver developed in-house by ACube Systems controls the AMD Radeon RX 570 graphics card.
This is a screenshot of AmigaOS 4.1 running on a Sam460ex with only an NVMe SSD, which is controlled by an in-house developed driver by ACube Systems.

As Enrico Vidale is a beta tester for AmigaOS 3.3 (currently under development), there was also an Amiga 1200 on one of the tables running a snapshot of the new operating system version.

A screenshot of the still-in-development version of AmigaOS 3.3 running on an unmodified Amiga 1200.
One of the new tools for configuring the Workbench’s settings in the version of AmigaOS 3.3 that is still under development.

Stopping to talk to them, I discovered one of their latest and extremely fascinating projects: a new kernel, based on the open-source source code of the AROS operating system, capable of running natively on the AmigaOne X5000 sold by the company A-Eon and the Sam460ex from ACube Systems. Andrea Palmaté (here a link to support his work) has been working on it with extreme passion for only a few months. Started almost as a personal challenge, the result has gradually proven to be increasingly solid and, as of today, it has reached a state of progress that allows AmigaOS 4.1 to boot and various applications to run. This milestone introduces two previously impossible features, shown to the public for the first time: support for all cores present on the CPU and better memory management, making the system decidedly more stable. For those familiar with the AmigaNG world, this news is quite groundbreaking.

Andrea Palmaté from AmigaLabs, who tells me enthusiastically about his recent experiments.
Andrea Palmaté from AmigaLabs shows me his private GitHub repository, where he is developing a new kernel based on the open-source AROS kernel, which is capable of supporting the AmigaOS 4.x operating system for PowerPC.
This is a screenshot of AmigaOS 4.1 running on an AmigaOne X5000 with the AROS-derived kernel developed by Andrea Palmaté. The kernel features multi-core support.

Being aimed at an Italian audience, the entire event featured various talks given in Italian. Unfortunately, this meant that some foreign attendees were a bit lost when someone spoke into the microphone. However, the language barrier allowed me to interact more with various international participants, trying to translate what was being said for them; amongst them were George Sokianos (here a link to support his work) and Timothy De Groote from Hyperion Entertainment.

Timothy De Groote from Hyperion Entertainment and me.

Amongst the various presentations, there was one by Mike Battilana, a highly renowned figure in the Amiga world. He began his career as a developer for the company Cloanto, which sold excellent productivity software widely used in the community, such as the text editor C1-Text and the graphic editor Personal Paint. Obviously, as an Amiga enthusiast, I couldn’t help but ask Mike for a selfie, which we took with great cheer.

Mike Battilana presenting the revised Amiga logo.

Everyone in the room held their breath while Mike Battilana unboxed the TheA1200, which is distributed by RetroGames.

What an honour to meet Andrea Battilana from Amiga!

In the afternoon, ACube Systems gave their presentation. While they were taking their seats, Enrico Vidale gestured for me to join them on stage. I must say it took me by surprise — a pleasant one, as I had the opportunity to speak on behalf of the members of the Power Progress Community association and all the people who had donated to help us reach this point.

This is the moment when the Tyche Powerboard was officially unveiled to the event’s attendees. From left to right: myself, representing PowerProgressCommunity; Max Tretene from ACube Systems; and Enrico Vidale from ACube Systems.

Various exhibitors showcased systems based on original Amiga models at the event, although the majority were AmigaNG systems, including A-Eon X5000 and ACube Systems’ Sam460ex models.

There were far fewer customers on Sunday mornings than in the afternoon, partly because people had to go home.

Ultimately, I must say that I was very pleased to take part in this year’s Pianeta Amiga. It was a brilliant opportunity to meet the people behind this diverse community, who are united by a passion that began in their teenage years in the 1980s and 1990s.

A photo of the ACube Systems team with Timothy De Groote, the director of Hyperion Entertainment.

The impression I take away is that all the hard work and moments of discouragement associated with the project’s ups and downs – in our quest to produce a new, modern motherboard based on the PowerPC platform – are underpinned by a community that relentlessly pursues its dreams.

To all of you who want to get your hands on a Powerboard Tyche, I ask you to support us with your donations for just a little while longer – we’re almost there!

Prototypes could arrive in late September

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.

  1. 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.
    €5,305.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

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)
Powerboard Tyche Desktop Silkscreen

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

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!

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.

Specs

Form Factor: Micro ATX – measuring 244 mm in height and 172 mm in width.

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 1
  • PCIE2 x4 VIDEO Card 2

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

  • it features optical digital audio inputs and outputs,
  • 6 analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound,
  • separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity.

USB: Four 3.0 and Two 2.0 ports

STORAGE:

  • NVM Express (NVMe)
  • M.2 2280 connector
  • 2 x SATA2
  • 1 x SDHC card reader

NETWORK:

  • 2 x Gigabit ethernet RJ-45 connector

Donated: 58.30%
Goal: €9,100.00
58.30% Raised
€5,305.56 donated
18 Donors
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  • Milestone

    Phase 1: Schematics Design (done)

    Phase 2: PCB Design (done)

    Phase 3: Prototypes Production: goal 27.09.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 4: Prototypes Tests. : goal 31.10.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    The timing of milestone depend from your donation. Thanks!

  • Headline

    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:“liberal donation – NAME and SURNAME”

    ( for person with italian fiscal code if you specify your fiscal code your donation is tax deducible)

    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

    <br...

    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:

    1. A nonprofit association cannot make commercial products;
    2. The association can receive donations, but cannot refund them;
    3. 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:

    1. The association can have a particular goal to reach and ask donation to achieve it, but it cannot give back the money (no refunds).
    2. Donation must be altruist so, no one will receive something back for their donation.
    3. 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.

    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

    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!!​

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.

Debian ppc64

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!

KiCad Schematics sources published, waiting funds for prototypes

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.

As KiCad cannot yet import OrCad schematics, this is a 2-hop OrCad→Altium→KiCad flow.

The KiCad pages are out of order. There are two KiCad directories in this repository: one exactly as imported from Altium (KiCad_outOfOrder), and another where our volunteers attempted to change the page numbers to match the filenames, but they did not reorder in the sheet page listing — they are still in the same random-looking order. We are investigating how to fix this at some point, as the file with “01” in the filename should come first, since it contains the table of contents, in order for everything to line up correctly. Other than the ordering issue, it looks reasonable.

If you would like to help check the quality of the conversion to KiCad and potentially work to improve it, please contact us.

Schematics Donation Campaign updated its goal and completed — PCB Donation Campaign updated its goal with around €3,500 still needed to reach it

On 6th April 2026, thanks to the funds collected for the Notebook CE certification and due to the temporary halt of Notebook motherboard production, the association used €2,130 from that previous campaign to pay and balance the Desktop Schematics design costs that are €6,250.

A further €8,000 from association funds was used to pay a portion of the PCB costs in advance. The total cost of the PCB design is around €12,500; since €8,000 came from association funds, we have reduced the goal of the PCB donation campaign to €4,500.

  1. 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.
    €5,305.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

As you can see to reach the goal of this campaign we need to receive donations of around €3,100 to settle the balance with ACube for the PCB design before the end of May.

From March 2026 the PCB design has been completed and is in our hands, we are waiting funds to start prototype production.

To produce the first five prototypes, we need a total of around €9,000. Once we have the cash flow to balance the PCB design and to make this commitment to the manufacturer, we will sign the contract to proceed with production. To avoid further delays, we need significantly more donations.

Image by May Angelike from Pixabay

Join us to Help on Debian PPC64 Big Endian packages

Debian ppc64

Do you have already installed Debian 13 PPC64 on your G5 or Debian 13 PPC on your G4?

More info how to do it on our forum.

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.

If you want to investigate which are the packages that are compiled successfully on PPC64

link build debian ppc64

powerpc ( 32 bit) https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=powerpc&suite=sid

To verify if a bug is already reported on the Debian bug tracking system

How to report a bug https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

To fix and build a debian package

‘sbuild’, which is the software used to build Debian packages in a clean environment.

To get it working, all you need to do is create a file called  ‘release-name-architecture.tar’ in the ~/.cache/sbuild/ folder, which contains a minimal Debian system.

To create these tar files containing Debian images, is suggested to use another  little tool called ‘mmdebstrap’. It’s very similar to its cousin, “debootstrap”, which you may have heard of, but it’s a bit faster.

Finally, if you’re comfortable working with Git, we recommend the tool  “dgit”, which essentially allows you to download and build any Debian package in a consistent manner, without having to worry about how the package maintainer themselves works with it.

So, in terms of the commands to use on your machine:

mmdebstrap --variant=buildd unstable ~/.cache/sbuild/unstable-ppc64.tar
    dgit clone mbedtls
    cd mbedtls
    dgit sbuild

Contacts us

We are ready for prototype production!

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.

  1. 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:

  1. Before paying, we do not own the rights to the source files.
  2. 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 LinuxTrent, 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.
  1. 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!

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!