[Hardware] Hardware hacker runs GTA Vice City on a router with a little help from an eGPU and Debian Linux

[GL HERO SHIMA]

A German hardware hacker by the name of KittenLabs has published a blog post about how they managed to get the classic GTA: Vice City running smoothly on a router. Using an unusual hardware concoction of a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 and an AMD Radeon HD 7470 connected as an eGPU, KittenLabs managed to install Debian Linux and GTA: Vice City and it ran surprisingly well, as you can see in the video below.

The story behind this classic gaming hack is very interesting. The TP-Link TL-WDR4900 Wi-Fi router was singled out for attention as it has a reputation for great performance (for its release date of 2013). Central to the router’s performance is an NXP/Freescale QorIQ P1014 CPU which KittenLabs explains is actually a PowerPC e500v2 32bit processor.

Of course, even a powerful router doesn’t have a PC GPU-friendly PCIe slot, so some hackery was required to install an eGPU. KittenLabs designed a custom miniPCIe breakout PCB and attached it to the router after cutting PCIe traces leading from the CPU to one of the Atheros chipsets. This got them a working spare PCIe 2.0 interface.

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/hardware-hacker-runs-gta-vice-city-on-a-router-with-a-little-help-from-an-egpu-and-debian-linux