Subj : Forget Doom on a lawnmower or toothbrush, check out GTA: Vice Cit
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Tue Mar 05 2024 15:00:06

Forget Doom on a lawnmower or toothbrush, check out GTA: Vice City running on 
a TP-Link Wi-Fi router

Date:
Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:49:51 +0000

Description:
Check out a real gaming router  by which we mean one converted to be a gaming 
PC with some hardware trickery.

FULL STORY
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Playing PC games on your Wi-Fi router  and we dont mean online gaming via 
your router, but actually using the router as a PC  is not something you 
likely thought possible, but it very much is as a freshly aired project 
demonstrates. 

As highlighted by Toms Hardware , a pair of enterprising hardware tinkerers 
based in Germany, Manawyrm and tSYS (known collectively as KittenLabs), ran 
GTA: Vice City on a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 router. 

How on earth does that work? Well, routers have processors , and have done 
for a long time (indeed this TP-Link model is over a decade old, in fact). 
And with some enterprising hacking of the router, its possible to do some 
(limited) PC gaming using this routers PowerPC-based CPU, with the tricky bit 
being supplying the GPU. 

Of course, you arent about to fit a graphics card inside a router, but you 
can hook up an external GPU, which is exactly what was done with this 
project. 

As Manawyrm explains in a blog post , an AMD Radeon HD 7470 GPU was connected 
as an external GPU, with the connection being the difficult part  as it was 
necessary to provide a PCIe slot for the graphics card. 

That meant employing a mini PCIe breakout PCB and soldering it in, something 
of a complex endeavor. With a monitor hooked up to the Radeon card, and 
Debian Linux as the OS, the gaming commenced (eventually, after some tricky 
work on the software front). 

GTA: Vice City was demoed and runs decently enough, if a little slow. But 
hey, come on  this is a router being used as a PC. Check out the video below 
to see the game in action for yourself. Analysis: Were all Doomed (and GTAed) 

We are by now familiar with Doom being run on all manner of weird and 
wonderful devices and gadgets  such as a lawnmower (yes really, a smart 
model). And this is another one to file in that particular cabinet of 
unexpected but cool ways to use hardware that you never thought of 
gaming-wise. Just with a different game in this case to make a refreshing 
change. 

Wondering why the Radeon HD 7470 was drafted in as the graphics card when its 
a hopelessly far cry from the best GPUs these days? Well, originally the 
hackers did attempt to get something more contemporary working with the 
TP-Link router, namely an AMD RX 570 graphics card (from 2017), but didnt 
have any joy (due to compatibility issues with 32-bit platforms, they 
speculate). So, it was necessary to switch to the longer-in-the-tooth Radeon 
HD 7470. 

All of this makes you wonder what oddity these boundary-breakers of the 
hardware tinkering world will come up with next. Doom on a toothbrush was an 
effort seen recently, too, as well as the aforementioned lawnmower. You might 
also like The best graphics card deals out there Top gaming PCs: great rigs 
for serious PC gaming Best PC games of 2024: must-play titles you don't want 
to miss



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/forget-doom-on-a-lawnmower-or-toothbrush-c
heck-out-gta-vice-city-running-on-a-tp-link-wi-fi-router


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