Tablet-based NAS adventures continue!

1812

The BushNAS project continues!

A mixed bag today. I began despondent and it took me a long time to get around to doing anything. As it turns out, the day went alright in the end.

No touchscreen, but that wasn’t expected, and the sound doesn’t work, probably due to a driver issue, but I don’t think I’ll need sound for this tablet’s intended use.

The big problem was the Bush tablet kept randomly powering off, which is such a massive flaw in a NAS. At first I thought there was a fundamental issue that would utterly derail the project and was about to give up on it and drag an old laptop off sale on eBay and back into service.

Not so fast, depressed person! Perhaps it’s just your defeatism talking.

Having used a Raspberry Pi or two for more than five minutes, perhaps my brain was subconsciously tuned to find a possible solution: the power. Checking the back of the tablet, it asked for an input of 5V 2.5A, whereas the PSU I was using was 2.1A. THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM. Tried a 2.4A supply: also powered off. Right, will a 3A supply suffice? It needed hacking a bit to solder on a micro USB connector instead of its barrel jack, but… it seems to work! Managed to do quite a few things and it didn’t power off.

Then there was a palaver with Gpedit: I needed to use it to get rid of the utterly pointless pre-password splash screen (imagine the collective amount of time wasted by millions of people having to dismiss that screen hundreds of times…) 

I tried the process once, but the power situation arose during it and the system powered off. After that was sorted and everything was stable, I couldn't access Gpedit:

“Failed to open the group policy object. you might not have the appropriate rights.”

What??

A googling revealed this:

https://anandthearchitect.com/2021/09/16/gpedit-msc-failed-to-open-the-group-policy-object-on-this-computer/

But when I followed the file path it suggested, it wasn't there. More googling led me here:

https://community.spiceworks.com/t/how-to-gain-access-to-gpedit-msc/670989

…and I felt like a right muppet because it was just that the folder I was looking for was hidden and I hadn't thought to check that. Amateur.

So, onto the NASing.

I used this page:

https://pureinfotech.com/setup-network-file-sharing-windows-10/

And followed the instructions for “using basic settings” which sounds right up my pathway.

And… it just worked. I was able to share a folder and have it appear on another computer on the network straightaway, which was VERY surprising, as a lot of my experience trying to do the same thing was much more difficult. For this to work over WiFi is a nice bonus.

Now, I’ll just find a suitable place for the BushNAS to live, along with the external HDD case. That’s connected to the tablet via a USB hub (funnily enough, the one that was formerly powered by the 3A PSU) and it’s all USB 2.0, but this NAS is about accessibility rather than speed.

A surprisingly successful day.

BushNAS!

2004

Finally getting around to sorting a centralised NAS… in the cheapest way possible! An old Bush-branded tablet running Windows 10 connected to a 2TB drive in an external case. Gotta start somewhere.

In the interests of future-proofing, I'm working on moving all my machines to IoT for its super-longterm support.

The Big Box is done, as is one of the T410s. Hit a snag when trying it on the Bush tablet as it's 32-bit only, so had to make a new installation disk with an older version of Enterprise that is 32-bit. Hopefully I can convert it to IoT with the amazing [redacted] script program.

Using Driverpack solutions 16 to install some drivers, especially the WiFi. Frozen completely part way through this process, so did a hard reset.

Back in Windows, tried activation script without internet, just out of interest; no dice. 

So Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is activated, but because I had to install the older 32-bit version, the method on the [redacted] website to convert to IoT doesn't work, so no IoT for me. Oh well, LTSC is still better than the old Education version I was using.

Just for posterity, to convert LTSC onto IoT in future (e.g. after changing language), these are the keys:

Windows 10:

[redacted]

Windows 11:

[redacted]

Haven't tried Driverpack solutions again; it got me as far as having WiFi & Bluetooth so now I'm just going to trust to Windows update to install drivers. It would be weird if the touchscreen suddenly worked after all this; it never worked in windows 10 before.

Should I try installing Windows 11 on it…? Is there a 32-bit version?

(A few moments later.)

No, there is no 32-bit version of Windows 11, so the 2019 version of 32-bit Win10 LTSC with support until 2027 is the absolute latest version that will run on this Bush tablet. After that… Well, I just better get saving up for a proper NAS in the next three years!