I dug it out again. I had forgotten the passwords, so I downloaded raspibian and reloaded the card.
I connected it to a monitor using a HDMI to VGA cable, and a USB hub/converter combo to connect my ancient ps2 keyboard and mouse.
It booted up fine and the display was crisp. I plugged in a WiFi adapter and after some fumbling around with the settings, mainly because I did not bother to read the manual first, I got it to connect to the internet.
It tended to freeze if I scrolled too fast, and I suspected my mouse to be at fault. But it was the old phone charger I was using to power it that was the problem. Everything was fine when I used my tab's charger rated at 1.5A.
So I removed everything except the WiFi dongle and it works fine. It can be placed anywhere within range of the WiFi and I can interact with it via ssh or vnc.
It currently has a 4 GB card for the operating system, and one free USB port which could have a USB stick with 64 GB or more of storage.
As I tend to use my phone, tab or netbook to look at and interact with the same set of stuff this NAS setup would make it easier to keep data in sync.
I measured the current draw. It was less than 700mA at 5V, a power of Three and a half watts.
And that is quite impressive.