TP Link wireless router has been modded to play GTA Vice City

Old Radeon GPU and open-source software to the rescue.

As network traffic grew due to the popularity of streaming services, hardware had to keep up by offering faster bandwidth and more capable processors that can handle this traffic. It is no longer surprising to see multicore CPUs used specifically in network equipment, especially routers, which can now be extended into media servers, powerful firewalls, Quality of Service or simple future proofing for whatever is needed later.

The TP Link WDR4900 released in 2013 came with a PowerPC e500v2 32bit processor. The WDR4xxx series are very popular routers for modding and for open-source network software like OpenWrt, DD-WRT and Tomato. Some of this software is updated even to this day for these old routers.

The router board has plenty of connectivity options, but a PCIe slot is not among the features. Hackers going by the names “Manawyrm” and “tSYS” were able to add such a slot manually and then use it for external GPU connection to Radeon HD 7470, reports Tom’s Hardware . This configuration could run one of the most popular games of all time, the Grand Theft Auto Vice City. But of course, it is easier said than done.

MiniPCIe interface on WDR4900 router, Source: KittenLabs

The Mini PCIe slot has to be added manually and soldered to the board. Then the extension cable connects to the external GPU, which then outputs the data to the screen. Originally, the plan was to use a bit modern Radeon RX 570 graphics card. Due to some driver issues, it was decided to switch to legacy drivers which are supported for the HD 7470 based on AMD Caicos GPU featuring 160 shading units and 1GB of GDDR5 memory. It is enough to run GTA Vice City.

Worth noting that due to the architecture used by the processor, a special version of the game had to be used. The GTA Vice City has a public reverse-engineered version that had to be compiled specifically for the PowerPC processor. That attempt was successful when combined with some Mesa 3D drivers and a lot of software tinkering.

Certainly, an interesting achievement, but not something we recommend doing on your own. Modern hardware hacking has come a long way, one can only wonder what GTA 6 will run on in 10 years’ time.

Source: KittenLabs via Tom’s Hardware