Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️It's my roommate's Surface Hub. It's a 3 or 2S, we're not 100% sure yet.
https://digipres.club/@gewt@treehouse.systems/116122905249248331
we are currently trying to update it into usefulness
It's a whole different interface to Windows, very mobile-like. You can get File Explorer but it can't view stuff outside your home dir and external drives. There's no windows->run and seemly no task manager on ctrl-alt-delete
oh and it uses a tiling window manager.
here's a video showing the UI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9nAwiS-m_4
Windows 10 Team Edition Demo!
the official MS docs say that the way you get into UEFI on this one-button device is that you turn it on using the power button, then when it boots, you turn it off again, then turn it on again
repeat until it goes into uefi
repeat until it goes into uefi
and when you're using the recovery tool, you have to stay in the room
cause it'll go to sleep if there aren't any people in the room, and that'll interrupt the download
The first option it gives you is "buy a newer one"
The second option is "use the automatic update" which hasn't worked for three months
The second option is "use the automatic update" which hasn't worked for three months
the manual update says you should get two 32gb flash drives.
the first drive will have the Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows (an environment built on Windows 11 IoT) recovery ISO
and the other 32gb flash drive will contain a 3 kilobyte certificate file
I'm gonna stick the cert on a floppy disk and see if that works
I should have a USB paper tape reader. 3k isn't too long on tape
also if it turns out Microsoft has somehow broken USB floppy drive support on this 9k$ paperweight I'm going to drive up to redmond with a hammer and take apart their HQ brick by brick
okay I was wrong, it doesn't just need a 3kb certificate file, you have to use another app to build a DFI update image from that.
so it needs a 15kb file
And we're installed! Apparently the UEFI on this thing does indeed support USB floppies!
huh. I was looking at the UEFI settings and they put "occupancy sensor" under "Radio".
It's not a camera?
It's not a camera?
there's a recovery image from Microsoft I'm downloading through the Windows 11 Tool but it's downloading at like 0.1 millibytes per slow
tried again, and I think it finally stalled out at 20.39gb of 22.16gb
that was like two hours of downloading ;_;
and there's no resume
"If the device was unplugged or experienced an abrupt power outage or pulled power cord, wait at least 15 seconds before attempting to boot from USB."
what?
does the USB stack not come up in the first 15 seconds of power on?
AHHHHHHH IT STOPPED AT 21 OF 22GB
I finally got a version of the recovery disk downloaded, and it boots.
It tries to recover to a version of windows 10 that's not terribly useful, but I think now that I have a working recovery disk, I can munge that disk into a windows 11 recovery disk
It tries to recover to a version of windows 10 that's not terribly useful, but I think now that I have a working recovery disk, I can munge that disk into a windows 11 recovery disk
hey microsoft you could have made this migration go a lot smoother if you'd just told your recovery-image-generating-tool how to make win11 disks
wait can I just lie to it that I have a Surface Hub 3 and it'll do that?
NOPE it tries to give me MTR
updating this thing is mainly a nightmare because the only updates I've managed to at all get working are the ones from the Surface IT Tool and it can't download most of the images because microsoft is storing the images on a server that someone reboots every 10 minutes or something
microsoft, you know that resuming HTTP downloads has been a solved problem since, uh, 1997?
It's a 22gb file and it can go as fast as half a gigabit/s but it keeps just hanging at like 14gb in. Your only option is to cancel and try again, which starts from byte 0
they mention this might be a problem in one of the many FAQs, and they recommend you fix it by getting better internet
I should MITM myself and see if I can figure out where it's downloading these files, and just curl it
I'd be tempted to launch my win95 VM ad use GetRight to download it, but I imagine it'd have some issues with TLS and certificates and such
oh right I need to install TCP/IP onto my windows 95 machine first
lemme find my win95 floppies
Nah, MS won't let you download the file over HTTP, and this version of GetRight from 1997 doesn't support HTTPS.
the curl download failed with a connection reset after 17 minutes and 20gb!
so I tell curl to resume it, and... the server starts over from the beginning.
MICROSOFT'S STUPID SERVER DOESN'T SUPPORT THE RANGE HEADER
IT'S 2026 BUY A REAL COMPUTER
anger canceled, I was just misreading curl. it did resume.
so again, why doesn't microsoft's official tool do this?
anyway I have the file now. There's a metadata JSON file that I don't have, but it looks very fakable. Then I can use the official recovery tool to build me a bootable USB drive, like it's supposed to be able to do
FUN FACT: the Surface IT Tool doesn't seem to validate any of the windows version info you give it in the JSON file!
yeah no it just failed verification. So I'm just going to try to download it, again, and again, and again, until I get lucky
it already hung
currently on attempt #8
#7 made it to 17gb (of 22gb)!
slightly tempted to automate it. watch the screen for the visible download amount, and if it hasn't changed in Xty seconds, hit cancel, restart.
cross your fingers, we're at 19gb and still climbing at 76 Mbps!
21gb!!!!
bad idea: I already MITM'd this once.
I download the file with curl and stick it on a local fast server. Then I set up mitmproxy to silently rewrite requests to their shitty server to my local one, which will be an actual server that works and doesn't randomly drop connections once out of EVERY FUCKING TIME
annoyingly I already deleted the file I downloaded earlier.
(I'm juggling laserdisc archival files right now, so my laptop has a VERY full hard drive, and I thought I was done with that file when it failed verification)
my first attempt and curling it stalled at 16mb.
not gigabytes, megabytes.
hey microsoft could I mail you some blank floppies and you just return 'em with the file on it? that might be easier at this point
my best guess for what is happening: I'm getting randomly loadbalanced onto a bunch of very overloaded servers.
I have downloaded the file and I'm now copying it onto my local server.
why didn't I just download it on my local server in the first place, so I wouldn't have to copy it across my house's network?
good question.
okay the files all moved locally so I can just make mitmproxy point it at the different URL. but I think I have been screaming at this problem enough for one day, so I'm going to stop for tonight.
the surface hub has not defeated me yet, I fight on
I lied. mitmproxy is now redirected to my local server, and Surface IT Tool is downloading from it.
annoyingly slowly, actually. Only 51Mbps? this is 22gb!
(it's probably because mitmproxy is handling all the bytes instead of letting nginx do it)
okay I have made a recovery disk by using the MITM download hack
how much do you want to bet this thing won't even boot?
it boots! it's now recovering
this may finally get us incrementally closer to a version of windows that actually works
Rairii 
Caden
rifter
t3rminus
ROTOPE~1 ⭐️@foone THEY'RE ALL OVERLOADED BY YOU. IT'S ALL YOU
Rue Mohr
Michael Guntsche@foone Can you please stop DDOSING MS infrastructure by downloading one file from them, I am trying to work here, thank you.
ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ
amy
Perma
C.Software "engineers" never even considering, much less testing, the non-happy-path. I'm always surprised when I run into other engineers that literally never seem to even consider "Okay, what could go wrong here, and what can I do about it?".
Glad you bludgeoned it into shape, despite MS's efforts.
Friedhardware@foone Maybe they haven’t prompted copilot just right? Im sure they’ll get it working /s
fucked up LLM dog [Viridi Vix]
