_Real_ gaming router - GTA Vice City on a TP-Link router

[@gabboman92]

this is stupidly amazing 10/10 this needs a video explaining how and a line of "why? fuck you thats why"

[@Manawyrm]

Well, there's a long blogpost in the description, explaining how :)

[@Lurch-Bot]

You don't need a why. The how popped up in my news feed. Makes gaming on an old ARM based security recorder seem like a piece of cake. The only motivation needed is the desire for a challenge.

[@gabboman92]

@@Lurch-Bot that is "fuck you thats why" but with more words

[@BogdanKatansky]

@@Manawyrm Do you think AAA gaming will be possible with Android phones if USB4 become available on SD 8 Gen4?

[@НикитаСахаров-ю1у]

Hi! You're cool. Please tell me which language do you think to study in order to have more access to information about IT, German or English? In what language were you looking for information to make your invention, I just do not know either English or German, there is little information about IT in my native language. I'm from Nepal@@Manawyrm

[@yassinehani]

what console do you use? him: router

[@RachelWolfe]

"him"

[@imstupidbut]

@@RachelWolfeyes?

[@gamagama69]

@@RachelWolfe we gotta pick our battles

[@notvailldk4503]

@@RachelWolfe pronouns? It's 2024

[@uno-x-oun]

Router: him

[@Lurch-Bot]

Dude just casually playing classic GTA on a router is so meta. Much respect for the work that went into making this happen. I have an old router or two laying around. Maybe I'll try to run DOOM on them or something. I think I have a halfway decent Wi-Fi 5 router that should be up to the task of running DOSBox.

[@JanekMain]

What does it mean "meta"?

[@xcruell]

​@@JanekMain He doesn't know it either, judging by his first sentence..

[@kvdrr]

@@JanekMainhe meant "metal" ....

[@JanekMain]

@@kvdrrstill doesn't explain what it means.

[@kvdrr]

@@JanekMain go look up the definition of "metal" @ urban dictionary then

[@ArifKamaruzaman]

Imagine going to LAN party with this gaming router.

[@santi308]

Well. they gonna have the LAN at least

[@comradepeter87]

He took LAN party quite literally

[@DariuszMacholl]

I love people putting PCI-e GPUs where those shouldn’t be! This video also is kinda ASMR. “No thoughts, head empty, just playing GTA VC on a decade old router” for an hour would be something I’d watch before sleep.

[@Mr.1.i]

In it, do u think its genuine or fake he's got an external gpu running through its pci lanes I'd love to know were the ram is....it should run old versions of windows if it runs games

[@h.b.5577]

@@Mr.1.i Definitely no windows there. The router is actually an embedded PowerPC based system with a miniPCIe adapter running Debian Linux and the reverse engineered reVC port of Vice City. Check out the description, it links to a blog post with a pretty detailed description, really fun experiment.

[@Mr.1.i]

Will it run pretty much any retro game upto about ps2

[@Splarkszter]

I was so entertained that i forgot it was running on a router

[@Splarkszter]

​@@Mr.1.i You need drivers but yes you could

[@pingtime]

Funny how you can put a Graphics card on a PowerPC based router from 2013 that never intended to do such thing, meanwhile Raspberry pi CM4, despite tons of community support and ridiculous pricing cant do the same thing

[@kreuner11]

Yes they can? Done many times and even with large scale gaming cards

[@pingtime]

@@kreuner11 can you give me a link to the article/video successfully doing that? Jeff Geerling even have dedicated website for PCIe card compatibility for CM4, and the only card that "works" was old HD 7470, 5450, and basic display adapter based on SM750 chip, and all of the card that "work" is stuck on console or constantly crashing the system. And yes, even I tried it constantly on my own CM4 system since 2022, and so far, I only get the same result like Jeff Geerling.

[@ivanjacob_]

​@@kreuner11Read his article lol

[@PixlRainbow]

This router actually experiences the same issues as the CM4, if you read the blog in the video description. He is stuck using an AMD Radeon HD 7470 with a custom compiled kernel and custom compiled drivers.

[@pingtime]

@@PixlRainbow I know, but in the end it worked, especially the 3D acceleration, meanwhile in the other hand, CM4 is locked out on the console

[@wantnotwant]

You were so preoccupied with whether you could, you never stopped to think if you should. Which I'm glad, because that answer would have been "yes"

[@GameMaker3_5]

I love how modern embedded devices are so powerful nowadays that they can actually compete with some legitimate game consoles from 20 years ago!

[@pauliustumas4104]

It is more and more harder to surprise people, but this project makes you really surprised these days 😊

[@toto99303]

Dude, this is insane! Hands down on the amount of effort for this project!!

[@SyphistPrime]

I read your write-up on this and this is insane. The amount you had to recompile was crazy. I've also followed you on Fedi. I'd love to see more stuff like this.

[@jm036]

L profile pic

[@SyphistPrime]

@@jm036 literally who asked?

[@jm036]

@@SyphistPrime You when you put that horrid flag there

[@SyphistPrime]

@@jm036 you're a transphobe. Opinion immediately discarded.

[@jm036]

When a router SoC has a better PCIe implementation than a Raspberry Pi Edit: Oh wow, it's a PowerPC chip, that's damn cool.

[@RixRixDon-mt9pq]

clarify

[@jm036]

@@RixRixDon-mt9pq Pi 4 PCIe lacks features for GPUs to work, this random router does not.

[@sean8102]

Man it's amazing how far we have come. A friggin ROUTER, a regular home consumer router can run a PS2 game. It just needed the GPU connected to its PCI-E lanes, and Linux loaded onto it (not saying this was easy by any means to be clear). But the fact the CPU/SoC was powerful enough, and the router had enough RAM etc is crazy.

[@alexanderbuchler4048]

finally a gaming router that lives up to the name

[@maniek86]

Woah, amazing work! I once thought about rewiring PCIe lines of one router that I had with OpenWRT to experiment with it, but actually doing it and using it to connect a graphics card and make it work is mind-blowing! And actually I managed myself once to run Linux and X11 on a DVB-T receiver to play minesweeper.

[@metatrongroove2824]

The world needs more of this. If you can play GTA on this device, there's so much potential that just turns to e-waste due to propietary firmware and planned obsolescence. Great inspiration to look our devices in a different way.

[@25566]

That's why OpenWRT exists, keep routers updated indefinitely and unlock more features than the manufacturer gives you.

[@gglivetv]

We don't know if he plays on router

[@Nebby_Webby]

​@@gglivetvwhat

[@BuzzingGoober]

Sigh... the framerate looks like shit. This is a novelty. There's no market for such shitty 'ewaste' when 90% of people have a smartphone that can perform the same function-much better at that.

[@hrr597]

​@@BuzzingGoober 🤓🤓🤓

[@petrlaskevic1948]

I read the blog post, and wow! Amazing skill. Adding pcie slot to a motherboard which doesnt have one, all the software stuff... Just wow!

[@GingerNingerGames]

I'm not going to lie, I skim read the title and thought you'd somehow gotten a GPU to connect to a computer via wifi, but what you actually did is WAY better. This is awesome, now I want to make one to be an emulation machine or something, play old DOS games on it or something like that. This is cool as, I have one of those adapters and a lot of old GPU's laying around.

[@GingerNingerGames]

On second thought, after looking at the process to get it working, no. Well done

[@bendergamer14]

I've been working with re3 engine quite long time and never seen someone do something "out of the box" like you did. It is interesting that you had to patch a lot of files in order to make it work properly. I tried to do the same with mobile (postmarketOS), but no luck at all! Hope that re3 repository be freed, so we can share our work with the community again. So sad we can't do what DOOM community does. Anyway, great work!

[@PPablinho]

If somone can change the codes directly taken from gta3/vc decompilation (since the original devs cannot work on that anymore) maybe there's a change to recover the project

[@bendergamer14]

​@@PPablinhoYes. The problem is actively work on it because it's a code "from Rockstar" (mostly it is). That's why I'm working on another version of it, on a different language, implementing my own bugged code. Surely most stuff that were codded in re3 won't be directly ported, since the all the engine is being rewritten (even librw).

[@PPablinho]

@@bendergamer14 Wow, best of luck my friend with the rewritting, since my childhood dream is to see GTA Vice City (one of my fav games of all time) in an open source engine I'm glad that someone can really fix the re3 engine refactoring all the rockstar's code. I'm a dev with no experience in C++ so if there's anything that I could do give me a call!

[@crushfruits2660]

damn... Also love those colours in the background :)

[@amazingone915]

Average linux user

[@denisuya]

The real Plash Speed Aside of that, this is just an insane achievement considering there are some hardware and software mods, plus coding.

[@verifeli]

Bro just took the meme seriously and make it real. What a chad.

[@nils4214]

Is GTA Vice City the new DOOM? :D

[@AnalogFoundry]

It's about to be...

[@didiugb]

i hope

[@Iz4kiTiago]

🥸

[@umpatoaichamadobruno3425]

Yep,I hope,I honestly have hope

[@flossoul]

actually, is the real Doom, because they says that doom run everywhere but only they use the screen device, instead this that is actually processed by the router

[@TechKingdom35]

Dude, that is amazing. I used a similar setup to get an egpu on a cheap netbook and an apple tv. So much fun to play around with, but I would have never thought about using it in a router 😂

[@nogodpleaseno3416]

How lol

[@TechKingdom35]

@nogodpleaseno3416 The basic idea of this sort of project is to get the one pcie lane of the wifi card of a device and output it on a full size pcie connector. That way many devices like network cards, sata cards, m.2 ssds or gpus can be connected to potato devices :D

[@firesnake6311]

Man this is genius, I've been looking for a super low power pc and this just came up, I just have to subscribe, its like the craziest thing I've ever seen, please do more of these types of projects and videos

[@thenightterror9827]

Try using esp32-s3 as linux pc

[@firesnake6311]

@@thenightterror9827 lack of memory is the main issue

[@downey2294]

The old gta games had such bangers man

[@Nebby_Webby]

That was my first thought too 😂

[@royerxd3212]

We got linux on the NES and now a Wifi Router running Linux with GTA Vice City before GTA VI

[@non5125]

This here is gold. The painstacking process of going through it setting up you brother deserve oscar 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

[@mozilla2d]

*Sister :3

[@trilader]

This is neat. I'll go read the post on it now. This also made me realize I hadn't added your blog/projects to my RSS reader. That's fixed now.

[@hyperfish1]

I love the cat lights in the background 🤍💖💙

[@nex]

First impression: Huh? PowerPC? Was there a re-release for Xbox 360? Then: Oh, there's source code … except … it's not the actual source, it's all reverse engineered? And then … how many levels of necromancy and wizardry am I looking at here? That's so impressive. Btw. I was today years old when I learned that PCIe is even a thing in an old embedded system like that. P.S.: Does that mean one could theoretically get it to work on an early 2000s iBook with Radeon GPU?

[@Manawyrm]

Haven‘t worked with the older Macs yet, but I‘ve seen some people trying to do a G3 Mac port of this source code :) They would be facing many of the same endianess issues we did, otherwise it should work :)

[@SterkeYerke5555]

Yeah it works, or at least GTA 3 does. I've got it running on a Powermac G5. Not sure the iBook G3 would be powerful enough, but I'd say a G4 has a fair shot

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

You can't just put a Radeon in Mac and expect it to work... There need to be drivers.

[@3um]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/o6rRh2B6eb6Whtksi=CtuxV6hcykxGJa73

[@PixlRainbow]

​@@replikvltyoutube3727PowerPC Macs had Radeon drivers

[@morsine]

I've checked your blog post. Have to say, this is super nice. Well done!!

[@TDGalea]

My man saw "But can it run DOOM?" and thought "pfft, gimmie the money, Sonny."

[@farrel7829]

this router is better than my 2000's PC 💀

[@theghost_3962]

Doom: finally a worthy opponent

[@adamholmes91]

I remember saving up my paper boy money as a kid to buy this game, only to be dissapoimted my pc was too underpowered to run it. Meanwhile this dude gets it running on a fricking wifi router! 😂😂😂 Bravo man, bravo!

[@MrPartyWaffle]

I am amazed it runs so well, I remember back in the day, when my Pentium 4 machine with 8600gt, it didn't struggle, but it certainly wasn't smooth.

[@hitleradolf7635]

Lol its not running well at all. its running a game that came out in 2002 at like 25 fps

[@caustictoad]

@@hitleradolf7635 i mean its a router cpu

​@@hitleradolf7635lol for router it is

[@kalvon]

Man. i wish this video is more like that of a commentary videos about how you get his all done. but this is enough for me, so cool! didnt know a router could do such a thing

[@LinusJohansson-yu7cy]

Can it run Doom? 😅 Router: Hold my beer...

[@helmut666kohl]

GTA Wifi City! Also I am noticing that it runs way better than the definitive edition release!

[@ai.LILITH]

W also i like the cat lamps

[@Nebby_Webby]

Omg I didnt even see those those are adorable

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

This router is probably as powerful as those little netbook laptops that were on the market around 15 years ago or so. Crazy how much tech has evolved

[@Manawyrm]

Craziest thing: This router itself _IS_ 10 years old! It was made in 2013 and the CPU is even a few years older (around 2009-2010). Actually modern routers would be even more fun, but they all have pretty wonky PCIe controllers. We've tried, but haven't really had good luck with most of them. There's some more info about that in the blogpost in the video description.

[@Mirra2003-f9s]

@@Manawyrm lol so this means those laptops were so underpowered even back then 😂😂 btw there's another channel here on youtube that literally reposted this video but they added a voice over it

[@Huguito]

Bro this is so cool and interesting. Looks better than definitive edition lmao

[@vladislavkaras491]

Darn, this is so awesome! Also read the article, wow, so much job done for this! :D Thanks for the video!

[@maidado]

This is *real* gaminggg Nice kitty lamps on the windowsill :3

[@mozilla2d]

>:3

[@gustavodutra3633]

:3

[@felixfeliyfeliz]

:3

[@Toble_Miner]

😸 :3

[@Buchanj5.]

this what the definition of a gaming router should be.

[@IceyLV]

True definition of "Gaming router"

[@DimasHaryoGustama]

Whoa.. just whoaa.. this is even better than my pc back in the day.

[@danielriossuarez]

You, sir, deserve all of my respect. Great work. Now if you let me, I’m gonna read the full tutorial now.

[@yarin.suissa]

Your blog post was a fantastic read! Thank you for sharing, truly inspiring me to see what i can take aprt abd mess around with!

[@mdsysltd5573]

it's amazing to see the device we all have sitting on top of a shelf somewhere has the power equivalent of a playstation 2.

[@rejwanhasan7919]

ohhhh man, Love from Bangladesh

[@chicopintudo3443]

Som muito legal, bom relembrar os bons tempos 😃👍Like for ALL and 1 big Hug here of Brasil. TKS

[@Dhyotteh]

The fact that a router have more FPS in GTA VC than my Pc is simply... 😢

[@KNINESVIDS]

This game should be included with all gaming routers 😂 Bigger respect for leaving the soundtrack running like a bozz ❤

[@adlerweb]

But will it run crysis. ;)

[@Manawyrm]

Wenn du mir den Sourcecode besorgst, ja! 🤣

[@felixfeliyfeliz]

the day i find myself a person like them is the day i can die in peace.. (or absolutely not since i need to spend more time with them doing cool stuff like this), in other words this is so hilarious yet so creative and cool, i love it!!

[@Manawyrm]

was correct before the edit ;)

[@lemonyowo]

Are those trans kitty lamps intended? Congrats!

[@Manawyrm]

Yes! 🏳‍⚧😻

[@uwukai]

I thought so myself! 💖🏳️‍⚧️

[@carlosalbertoteixeira375]

Your feat is amazing, congratulations! Greetings from Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

[@gustavodutra3633]

BR até aqui? Kkkkkkkkkkkkk eai mano.

[@barbadolid5170]

Großartig reicht nicht um das was du gemacht hast zu beschreiben 👏👏👏👏👏

[@memnoe_lego]

Гений всего интернета...

[@alif__]

saw this on my google feed,nice work bro💪

[@МихаилСпесивцев-ь9э]

Це круто! Технології розвиваються навіть швидше ніж нам здається.

[@_Tualatin_]

До чого тут: "технології розвиваются", як що це просто гік проект на старому роутері?

[@МихаилСпесивцев-ь9э]

@@_Tualatin_ достатньо потужний процесор в роутері не просто так з'явився, 20років назад такий процесор коштував би великих грошей, а сьогодні він в звичайному роутері.

[@_Tualatin_]

@@МихаилСпесивцев-ь9э ну з цим згоден, але все одно якось не дуже доцільно це все прозвучало, як що чесно. Старий роутер=прогресс технологій. Короче я може придираюсь, але тут суть в іншому. В інженерних можливостях автора та його хакерському підході знайти цікаві не задокументовані можливості заліза, та щей змусити це виконувати дивний але цікавий код.

[@abdou.the.heretic]

Next: Gaming on a MRI machine while using human eyes and brain as Cpu and Gpu passthroughs to the modified chinese windows xp running the machine 😂

[@xymaryai8283]

💙💓🤍💓💙

[@reggiep75]

Now that is what I call some premium bastardisation of a TP-Link Router. You get all of today's internet medals!! 🎖🏅🥇🥈🥉

[@ItsSeamusKer]

U got nice cat lamps🎉

[@tetto3226]

1:27 router drift 🤙🤙🤌🔥

[@pungenthuman]

the mad bastard did it. a gpu connected to a router. bravo sir.

[@dimiusko]

Next: real-life recreation of the iconic intro by porting the game to Commodore 64

[@thomasmarshall4814]

Thankfully, KZbin recommendations gave it to me🎉🎉🎉

[@SeniorJose]

Your friend whose mother has taken away his console and PC for not studying.

[@DaviiiD3]

This guy wakeup in some day : What if I run GTA on a router?

[@LuioTap]

Its kinda impressing how a router runs gta vice city better than some computers

[@DM01710]

Great reading the blog and seeing this in action absolutely great , plus learning something new !!! 🙂 Thank you for all your work and the community. I do wonder if by modding the textures reducing file size and reducing the number of assets needing to be loaded into ram if you could improve the frame rate or have a small number of peds and vehicles spawn. maybe a streaming mod too. PS UT GOTY ed would be awesome!

[@Manawyrm]

Is there source code available for UT? Otherwise that port could prove a bit difficult :) Quake 3 and Half Life 1 would probably work... Best chance for a bit more performance is probably a RAM upgrade (sadly soldered BGA chip), it's currently swapping to the USB SSD, which is super slow. The GPU isn't the bottleneck at all, it can power through this at Full HD at 120fps. Peds and Vehicles are already set to the minimum in the game's settings dialog.

[@DM01710]

@@Manawyrm oh I see , I will need too or should have googled the router specs , and yep I get you swapp file or equivalent, and I'm not sure if source code is available I will have a quick Google.

[@DM01710]

@@Manawyrm after having a Google despite it being 20 plus years old the source code is held by one chap and unreleased by epic , but another favorite is available and less demanding Command And Conquer Red Alert source code is apparently released by EA on GitHub, ps half life and quake would be fantastic too plus the mod potential of both , thank you for your earlier reply 🙂

[@kristeritto5540]

- Mom, I want a gaming pc - No, we already have a gaming pc at home * The gaming pc at home😂

[@elmariachi5133]

A PowerPC CPU? Haven'T seen this since the Amiga times! I though they had dropped support for this in the Kernel already.

[@sutirk]

GTA VC always with its banger soundtrack

[@AlexanTheMan]

Hell, not only you could you run Doom on a freaking router, but classic GTA as well!

[@vask92]

Nice, remember playing this amazing game when I was in school, great times 😂

[@matusson6105]

Read the blog post, crazy stuff. Great work!

[@jamesfmackenzie]

Awesome! The real content KZbin was made for 😎 Next up - Mac OS Classic!

[@skolman]

AmigaOS4.1 support PPC SPE

[@riveducha]

This is my favorite type of “why not?” project

[@ccf_1004]

Oh, how I love silly projects like these... Sure, it's impractical, but is it cool? ABSOLUTELY!

[@sczullkjengker8380]

I approved and promoted this content as this is not easy to pull out

[@anro4479]

New CCNA task is just wild. 😰

[@bikashkumaryadav3606]

Someone: PC or Console ? Him: Router *Smirk*

[@UnixDaemonKiller]

I have ran Proxmox with pfSense and Windows for a pfSense gaming router/PC. Gigabit ethernet with Wireguard and both a 1050ti and integrated Ryzen APU. Needless to say, the Type 1 hypervisor portion got hacked.

[@kaipoh265]

KittenLabs doing the WORK

[@jackbaker9593]

can i play it on my refrigerator?

[@asiano3385]

That is pretty cool. Would it be possible on something like a TP-LINK Archer C7? Looks like it has a mini PCIe directly onboard. Or does it have a different CPU and memory configuration?

[@not_just_burnt]

i only OpenWRTed a router slightly worse than this for my home network... dis too cool for me :3

[@BluelightAmelia]

This is interesting I always knew routers were basically Linux machines relegated to spread WiFi and give internet but i didn't know it was even possible to just hook up a GPU to them

[@NPVB0809]

important question: can you play doom on it ?

[@BudgetTechUKYT]

Man I love this. Travels back in time to the year 2004, nothing but a TP link router for a lan. People stair, says your noob. Get rekt in CS 1.6 on a tp link router. Gg wp

[@stayjuice3724]

The graphics used in most high end routers and even nas are good enough for gameplay if you can find a way of running games in them. Most of the mini pcs they sell use nas chips and can even encode 4k

[@GraveUypo]

this is my sad router in my room right now. i've already purchased the replacement months ago but this one still works fine so i've been procrastinating the change.

[@aLinuxIce]

A real gamer dont need a PC ! A real gamer can game on anything !

[@ionbintf]

In the year 2050: We got GTA Vice city and DOOM running on everything.

[@WillF1980]

This guy is a genius. Awesome man