A user named Manawyrm posted a video on YouTube in which he runs GTA: Vice City on a TP-Link router.

To do this, Manawyrm used a TL-WDR4900 v1 router with an external AMD Radeon graphics card connected via PCIe. The whole thing runs on Debian Linux.

Manawyrm explained that he chose the TL-WDR4900 v1 because, unlike most other routers, it has a PowerPC-based processor from NXP. According to him, this processor offers a full 36-bit address space, high performance for a router released in 2013, and has PCIe controllers.

One problem was that the router did not have an external PCIe connection. So in order to connect the video card, the user developed a special miniPCIe board, which he connected to the router with enameled copper wire.

The first choice for a video card was an AMD Radeon RX570, but this test failed, so an AMD Radeon HD 7470 card with older drivers was used to run games and Linux.

GTA: Vice City, which was launched on this device, was also not easy. To run it, we used a reverse version that was developed specifically to run on this platform.

Manawyrm shared all the details and the full process of working on the project, including the code, on the Kittenlabs website.