There was a time round 20 years in the past, when the brand new hotness was taking management of residence routers to make use of as small Linux computer systems. An echo of this period lives on within the identify of the OpenWrt minimal Linux distribution, in reference to the Linksys WRT54G router which began all of it. Routers as small computer systems have been displaced by small low-cost Linux machines from the likes of Raspberry Pi, and the promise of discarded residence community gear doing attention-grabbing stuff receded. Now it’d simply be again, as [Jasper Devreker] exhibits us an Android TV set-top field from a cellular provider repurposed as a Linux pc that may even run a desktop atmosphere.

The strategy begins as you may anticipate, by figuring out a thriller connector as a debug serial port. This outputs all kinds of attention-grabbing boot info, however may be dropped right into a uBoot shell. From right here with a little bit of effort the eMMC storage may very well be dumped, and from that the character of the machine may very well be deduced. The CPU is an Amlogic quad core ARM Cortex-A53 SoC, which by a stroke of luck is a goal for which an Armbian construct is accessible. From there a Linux set up may very well be assembled, and even an AFCE desktop.

These containers are handed out within the a whole lot of hundreds by residence connectivity suppliers, so there’s worth in such a hack as they turn out to be obtainable for experimenters. Maybe it’s extra helpful as a small headless Linux machine than as a desktop, however we sense there are extra machines to come back on this line.

In the event you’d like a little bit little bit of historical past on hackable Linux units, have a learn of certainly one of our earliest posts that includes the Linksys WRT54G.